In 2005, my world changed when I was introduced to MySpace. Immediately I became at home online, negotiating extra screen time on my family’s shared computer, all on the basis that I was “CODING, DAD”. Of course, coding meant altering my page’s HTML to change the colour of the background and font, and to add flair to my ‘Top 8’ friends. A monster had been created, and it wasn’t a phase.

I became an early adopter of every online platform I saw. I got Facebook before anyone I knew because a boy I liked at my Christmas casual job told me to add him, and I’ve had Instagram since it was still OK to post pictures with filters that objectively made you look like shit, rather than like an Eastern European model. I maintained fire-emoji streaks on Snapchat, and once tweeted something that got 10,000 likes. I was a pretty big deal online.  

But now? Now I’m offline. I’m offline, everyone. If you try and find my Twitter, you’ll see it’s been months since I logged on. I don’t have TikTok. I thought Snapchat had gone out of business when the founder landed Miranda Kerr after saving himself for marriage. YouTube? I only use that for videos that show me how to change out the blade on the thing I use to grate my feet during my DIY pedicures. I’ve logged off and plugged into LIFE.

I don’t mean to be smug, though I do love to be smug. My life has changed in ways I didn’t really intend for. It started by necessity during the mania of Melbourne’s first lockdowns – I handed my Twitter login to a friend so they could change my password and lock me out. Then, I started teaching at a high school. Weirdly, since starting this famously easy job, those pockets of time I used to spend scrolling have rapidly disappeared. Teachers’ social media pages are also locked down harder than Western Australia’s borders during a global pandemic, so my audience to whom I perform an idealised version of my life has become strictly limited to people who know better than to fall for my shit, rather than the strangers I imagine were gazing upon my life with admiration. Without the dopamine hit of winning an argument with a misogynist on Twitter or receiving a like from a secondhand clothing influencer with perfect skin on Instagram, the sheen… dulled.

Here’s the thing, though – I don’t tell people these are the reasons why I’ve logged off. What I do instead is shrug and say, “I’m pretty offline these days,” with an inflection that suggests I’m so offline I don’t even know what ‘being online’ means. I imply that I never had a crippling social media addiction, because I’ve always just been too busy reading dense books or watching documentaries. I still use Instagram, I admit. But more like a Pinterest board to save posts from American women who have children with names like Kennedy and who post handy DIYs. Sometimes a friend will send me a link to a TikTok which I open in a browser window as though I am 75 years old.

A while ago, some friends and I converged to spend a few days by the beach. Everyone was so relaxed and having such a good time that phones kept being left unattended in other rooms, forgotten in handbags. It became a bit of a running joke: someone would ask the time and another would cry out, “I don’t know, I’m unplugged!” throwing their hands in the air. Someone would ask for music to be put on and another voice would yell, “Sorry, can’t help you, I’m unplugged.” That’s how I’m trying to be. Unplugged in a beach house. Eat, pray, loving without the algorithm.

This rant comes straight from the pages of issue 111. To get your mitts on a copy, swing past the frankie shop, subscribe or visit one of our lovely stockists.