The man in the waiting room was looking for a cubicle to change. I suggested the one I had used earlier. Unfortunately, she was already busy. I was in a hospital gown. He was in a hospital gown. He narrowed his eyes as he examined my face. “Mr. Cassivi, I really like your columns! He recognized me despite my face covering. My gray hair has probably betrayed me.
It was nice. Especially since I had just read the reactions to a tweet I had sent a few minutes earlier (on the absurdity of the third link in Quebec): “Hard to find someone more useless than Cassivi”, “Cassivi and her squaw surely do not ride a scooter ”,“ Cassivi, male personality of the year in Quebec ”, and so on.
However, being recognized in this way at the hospital, when only two thin layers of fabric separated me from my interlocutor – and I do not speak only of our faces -, made me feel vulnerable. And I hadn’t yet set foot in the stirrup (literally, by the way) in front of a nurse I don’t know either.
I sat in the waiting room, being careful to squeeze my legs – there’s nothing like a hospital gown to make your man aware of the inconvenience of manspreading – and I stared for a moment at the locked locker where I had stored my personal effects. I wondered if I was right to leave my cell phone there.
Under my jacket and its snaps that I had only been able to close halfway, I was naked like a worm. But to be frank, I mostly felt naked because I was without my phone.
Cut off from the world and from this extension of myself. Without the possibility of finding refuge in social networks, their trivial or material news, avoiding eye contact with patients / readers.
This shows the intensity of my cyber addiction. I spend an average of 5 hours 30 minutes a day on my phone, including 12 hours a week on Twitter and 2 hours on Facebook.
If there were no more social networks – the hypothesis of the report by my colleague Léa Carrier – I would have to review my lifestyle. No more no less.
“We become addicted to these devices! Says at the start of the most recent Marvel Universe movie, Eternals, the character of Sprite to that of Circe, who does not take his eyes off her phone. Both are demigods, although Circe has always been closer to humans. At the end of the film, the roles are reversed and it is Sprite, discovering his part of humanity, to whom Circe makes the same remark.
We become addicted to these devices. Twenty years ago, I had never owned a cell phone. Today, I find it difficult to do without it, in order to consult social networks, even if only the time it takes to watch a superhero movie.
For the past fifteen years, social networks have highlighted the need for everyone not only to exist in the public space, but also to make their voice heard. To participate in the discussions of the City by adding a grain of salt.
The pandemic has not helped matters. On the contrary, it exacerbated them. Since we are less in direct contact with our colleagues and friends, social networks have become the most effective way to take and give our news, a large group at a time. And to give his opinion.
In another movie hitting theaters this weekend, France by Bruno Dumont, the assistant of a famous reporter and TV host, measures down to the second the impact of his colleague and friend’s actions, statements and questions, by verifying in real time the reaction of the public on the networks social.
What is going on and what are people saying about it? I ask myself these questions too often, by consulting social networks (which we have renamed at home the “concerned networks”). It’s more than an unhealthy reflex. It’s practically a nervous tic.
Not only do I try to find out what others think about the current debate or controversy, but also I must refrain from commenting on this “news” which arouses my cynicism or provokes my indignation. It is a permanent state. A second nature columnist who has been commenting on the news for more than 20 years.
I try to console myself for this mania by reminding myself that at least I made a profession of it. But the temptation is sometimes so strong – to write what I think of the psychodrama surrounding the Impact’s name change, for example, or of the paradox between what makes us leap as a minority people and what we call fad among other minority groups – that I have to part with my phone. That is to say, physically pushing the device further on the table, out of my reach, or simply putting it away in another room.
I convinced myself, and I convinced my children, that it was necessary for me to consult Twitter so often for my work. It is true that I find most of the information I am looking for there, thanks to multiple sources, all over the world. However, social networks are also for me an inexhaustible source of procrastination, which prevents me not only from staying focused on the task at hand (writing a column on social networks), but also from freeing up time to be with my loved ones. , read a book, play sports or pick up dead leaves.
It’s sad to say, and the observation makes me ashamed, but not giving in to the temptation of social networks requires a real effort on my part. On vacation, I have to force myself to drop out. I self-inflict a cure. I am there.
Old habits are hard to lose. Also I decided a few months ago to withdraw the application Facebook from my phone. I always go there, but in a less systematic way, to find out about birthdays, to tell an anecdote or to dare an unpopular opinion that would earn me too many insults elsewhere than on a “private” page.
Could I do without social networks? Probably not. For now, I’m too addicted. Without these communication channels, I feel isolated, lonely, vulnerable. Like a naked patient under his hospital gown. But I try to heal myself.