Attention Liberation
& an exciting announcement!
Hello friends!
Jan 1, 2025 marked one year since I made the switch from smartphone to dumbphone. How does it feel standing on the other side of my first year without a smartphone? Pretty great. Has it been perfect? No. Have I backslid? Yes. Do I regret my decision to switch to a dumbphone? Absolutely not.
In fact, I believe it’s more important than ever to gain personal sovereignty over the tech devices that vie for that which is most sacred: our attention.
We are living in challenging times. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the war for our attention is even more nefarious and has far greater consequences than we could have ever imagined.
You may have never heard about a man named Curtis Yarvin nor do you have any clue how he’s influencing people in power. I hadn’t heard of him until recently when my friend Jay shared this New Republic article published in July 2024. The article describes how Yarvin, a software developer and self-described reactionary and extremist in San Francisco, wrote in 2008 that the “best humane alternative to genocide” is to “virtualize” these [unproductive] people: “Imprison them in ‘permanent solitary confinement’ where, to avoid making them insane, they would be connected to an ‘immersive virtual-reality interface’ so they could ‘experience a rich, fulfilling life in a completely imaginary world.’”
According to this recent interview with Yarvin in The New York Times, beyond vice president J.D. Vance, “Yarvin also has fans in the powerful, and increasingly political, ranks of Silicon Valley. Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist turned informal adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, has approvingly cited Yarvin’s anti-democratic thinking. And Peter Thiel, a conservative megadonor who invested in a tech start-up of Yarvin’s, has called him a ‘powerful’ historian.”
In these dark times, it’s more important than ever to free yourself from the grip of digital technology. Not only does digital addiction make us feel bad, it is also holding our minds hostage during a critical moment in history. Now, more than ever, we need to have our eyes wide open, our mind clear, our attention intact.
That is why I have decided to start hosting weekly Scroll Sanity community meetings!
Part educational, part support group - these gatherings will meet you where you are on your digital health journey. Come as you are.
As someone who has spent many years “in the rooms” (as we who attend 12-step meetings call our experience), I think about digital addiction as a real addiction like any other — alcohol, drugs, food, overwork, codependency. Like with nicotine, digital products are designed to be highly addictive and difficult to control. As any addict will tell you, finding fellowship and community is what has made all the difference on their journey to freedom.
That’s what I’m hoping to provide to the Scroll Sanity community.
Scroll Sanity weekly meetups will be a space for humans to meet (virtually) and share our experiences and challenges on our path towards digital health and digital sovereignty. Now more than ever, it’s incredibly important to establish our boundaries with technology and the mega-companies that control our devices and apps. Let’s liberate our attention! Let’s liberate ourselves.
I hope you will join me on this journey!
“What you pay attention to grows. Pay attention to your loveliness, your magnificent self. Begin now.”
Geneen Roth
