i stopped sending memes and started sending actual thoughts and it changed my friendships completely
i had this moment a few weeks ago where my best friend sent me a reel and i went to forward it to someone else and i stopped and thought wait. this is all i do. i receive content and redistribute it. that's my entire social life
i looked at my last 50 messages with my closest people. maybe 5 of them were actual words i typed. the rest were forwards, reels, tiktoks, screenshots of tweets. i wasn't talking to anyone. i was just airdropping the algorithm to people i love
the worst part is it felt like connection. like sending someone a funny video feels like you shared something. but you didn't share anything. you shared someone else's thing. you were just the middleman
so i started a rule for myself. before i send anyone a reel or a meme i have to send an actual thought first. could be anything. "this song reminded me of that road trip" or "i had the weirdest dream last night" or "do you ever think about how we almost didn't become friends." just something from me not from the internet
first few days were hard because i realized i didn't have that many thoughts to share. my brain had been on input mode for so long it forgot how to output. that's when it hit me how bad it had gotten
i'd been using pagelock арр to cut my screen time for a few weeks at that point, stuff stays locked until i scan a book page. and i noticed the reading was helping with this too. i'd read something and it would spark an actual opinion or memory and suddenly i had things to say to people. real things. not recycled content
my friend called me last week and said "you've been different lately, like you actually talk now instead of just reacting." and i realized yeah. i'd turned myself into a reaction machine. like, heart, forward, repeat. that was my personality for years
some friends matched the energy. conversations got deeper, longer, weirder in a good way. voice notes at midnight about random stuff. felt like being 17 again when you'd just TALK to people about nothing for hours
some friends didn't match it. they still just send reels. and i get it, it's easier. but i'm not going back to being a content relay station for people who don't actually want to know me
you don't realize how quiet your own voice has gotten until you try to use it again
anyone else tried actually talking to their friends instead of just forwarding stuff? how did they react