How to have fun again

Call it what you want: analog, offline, indie summer. What we know is we're missing something.

These are tips on how you can start to regain your independence from the screens and get back into the real world. 

Use this as a starting base for a detox, intertwine it with a 75 soft (or hard) challenge, take some, leave some.

Just consider the ways you use the screen, and the way the screen uses you. 

Social media stays home (not on your mobile phone)

Connection has become too convenient; This doesn't include the fandom and worldwide connections made possible through social media; I mean the negative side of connection.

It's not supposed to be this easy to know everything about someone.

Sharing online used to feel more meaningful, but now it feels like a job, or sometimes it actually is one needed to survive. 

The social media market grows and changes exceedingly fast, and to keep up with it is running against a never-ending train; some make it on, others get crushed. At what point do we ask ourselves what we're really chasing?

Rethink how you go online.

Are you trying to "be an influencer," or does your authenticity and creativity help you build an online community, instead of just an audience?

Instagram, Twitter (X), TikTok, and all the other social media apps that keep changing in an attempt to keep us happy and entertained; miss the mark, and we can't help but stay. However, lately, being online has begun to lose meaning and value.

AI has made being on the apps annoying and weird. It's stolen pieces of the internet that made it entertaining. Bots have infiltrated so much that comments and posting risk reaching an audience that makes the trouble not worth it. 

When I think of how I want to spend my time online, I want to feel inspired and intrigued; I want to meet new people with the same interests and discover my own taste and preferences. Instead of spending hours on socials, get into new websites. rabbit hole on Wikipedia, discover new artists on NTS Radio, join scenes on Perfectly Imperfect. Discover new blog sites, independent magazines (wink wink), get back into gaming and forums, explore and have fun, and then log off.

Go outside. Reconnect, and decenter social media.

Replace getting social handles; instead, make a note page of tags/contacts/emails you meet out, connect with them online when you make it home, and eventually get used to asking "Can I have your number?" or " Can I have your email?"

Disconnect from the discourse and connect more purposefully by separating from socials.

Exist beyond the feed.

From "network" to community 

Connect and share with intention; it's more interesting, more meaningful, and takes away a lot of the stress of social media when you're not over-cultivating an aesthetic. Constantly having 24/7 access to each other, continuous updates, endless scrolling, and ads has tainted sharing online. It's competition, comparison, and evaluation. Add some separation. Go more analog 

No matter how high-tech things get, analog has a charm you can't replace. With the lack of new analog in exchange for new digital, the decline in useful, less expensive products in comparison to the mass production of digital makes this easier said than done.

There is a nice middle ground: phone as a tool, calculator, maps, etc, and separate it from the things that keep you overly attached to it. 

Look at your phone: what apps would you miss if it turned off? Get a music backup, thrift an old mp3 and fill it with the music you like, burn cd's/swap them with friends. Show off your playlist skills and make a mixtape.

Models: Sophia Deaver, Hillary Castillo Marte, Mickey Tegegne Photos By Toni Desiree

Get a puzzle book or a word search. Swap a notes app for an on-the-go journal; write your thoughts, your schedule, and contacts you meet. Ditch overpriced reading apps and get a library card, get a book for on the go, and a book for at home. Get magazines, read obnoxiously, get well-read and educated, and reject the rise of ignorance and inconsideration. 

I don't care if it looks performative. Before, people brought books with them on the go, packed notepads, and walked around with portable CD players all the time, before it was all optimized. 

I don't think you should be shamed for going back to wired headphones because people think it's a little corny. 

Go out of your way to experience a life detached from the feed. 

Boredom is just a sign. Follow the way and see where it leads. Talk to strangers, join community groups, go to places alone, and open your eyes to the world again.

You need to be dancing.

Everything was on fire.

I knew it. The boy grabbing my hips on the dance floor knew it. And the way the DJ was playing, they knew it too.

I let the world slip away into the rhythm. And when I tuned back in, we were all outside.

My friend Andy was smoking and complaining about the cocktails; the lady we met at the bar chimed in, "They used to be $4." She's maybe thirty-two at most, and yet the sentiment is so foreign to me she might as well be talking about the days when burgers cost cents.

I pass Andy a shooter from my purse, and he puts it in his vodka soda. Cheap, effective, and enough to get us back out on the dance floor.

I'm not out of touch; I read the headlines this morning: war, tyranny, disease, and hunger across the world and in the States.

I balanced my checking and savings to make sure we could make groceries and gas for the rest of the month, and to my luck, I sneak away just enough for fun to not feel guilty. Still, I see the privilege in the act.

At the station, I give the clerk $7: 5 for gas, 2 for a 99-cent shooter. I pack it away with the other two that survived the summer. This, the gas and the shooter, will sustain the joy I need to reach tonight, to erase the feeling I have in my heart. If I dance long enough, something will replace it.

Did you know dancing is proven to help lower cortisol and stress levels? It reduces anxiety and depression symptoms, alters brain function, improves memory, and it's good cardio. A natural stress reliever passed down through tradition and history.

Tonight, it is alive and well in Houston's growing club scene.

My tips for a successful night out:

To have a good night, you have to chase the DJ.

When you hear a sound you like, let the thread guide you to the right places.

To have a good night, you have to get out of your head and put your phone down.

TO HAVE A GOOD NIGHT YOU HAVE TO BE DANCING.

While older generations groan on about how music is dying, the young people aren't dancing, and that clubbing is dead. Over the past couple of years, there has been a new sound rising from the south. Southern Club brings a new heartbeat to the dance floor, blending electronic with southern sound.

Artists Hyperfemme, Big Ace, and Amarji King established the subgenre back in 2023, and they are just a few of the many young artists bringing to life new sounds, new genres, and new spaces to the nightlife scene.

The pandemic, cellphones, and social media induced fear of embarrassment, hand in hand with section culture, make going out feel unbearable.

Today's DJs are changing the narrative, not only in sound, but in how they transform dance floor culture. HyperAce, Club Shugga, and other parties dedicated to music, movement, and community are giving clubs a comeback.

The same is happening all over the states; People want to get together, people want to dance, and if the traditional clubs aren't going to step up, the underground will have to.

Every week the list of where to go grows longer, whether you see it on your for you page or not. Tonight I'm one of the many that flooded in for Identity Trade's TrackID, a monthly dance party in Montrose; There's a certain something special in the air.

Sometimes I don't want to sit at the bar and look around for an hour. I don't want to spend $60 getting into some club with a line wrapped around the building where inside everyone just stares at each other. I think the tougher the world gets, the more I realize we need to be dancing.

Signs like "no requests, trust the DJ " and "The dance floor is for shaking ass, breakdancing, grinding, voguing, housing, connection. GET OFF YOUR PHONE AND DANCE" line the walls. MISSY, Identity Trade's resident DJ, spins tonight, and as we dance, everything falls into place. I'm nothing, I'm everything.

The bass encapsulates us, and when my feet finally grow tired, I head downstairs for a bathroom run.

The hefty weight of existing right now is no match for the resistance forming in the downstairs girls' bathroom.

"AND F- TRUMP" some girl says. The bathroom erupts in cheers.

I wait in line next to a tall girl with tequila on her breath. We talk about the video that has been trending all week of Trump talking about running for a third term; eerily, the internet couldn't decide if he was really joking or not.

She leans over and says, "He's going to try and stay." She says it like she's seen the future; I don't know what to say back.

I had seen the video just like everyone else. I had seen the website of him selling Trump 2028 merch. I wanted to wave it off, another attempt at capitalization from a con man who can sell a secret, but not of a serious man; still, that's what they said when he ran the first time.

"I hope not" was the most I could muster. "Me too," she continued. From the stall, my friend Teri yells, "He won't. We won't let him. We got rights for a reason." There was laughter in her voice, but the tone of the room grew gloomy anyway. What did that mean these days, rights? Then someone gasps and says, "I love this song."

We can hear the bass from upstairs, the party happening in a different room, and suddenly I long to spin under flashing fluorescents, replace one dizzy feeling with another.

We need to be dancing. Come close to me, stranger, let our hearts beat to the same vibration. We'll meet our troubles in the daylight.

As I return to the dance floor, I shuffle my way into the crowd, and everything is alive here.

Sometimes the weeks pass, the news gets darker and the days get harder, and I forget the world isn't just work, tragedy, and keeping your head above water. I let the monotony of doomscrolling distract me from the vibrancy of life.

Here, I forget myself, allow the waves of bodies to crash against my own; I'm alive again too.

It all still exists out there. Tomorrow I’ll have to research food banks, how to start a garden, and what to do once gas gets higher. I’ll text my mother and try not to worry beyond my control, a task I can never seem to accomplish.

Tomorrow is a new day, but tonight, in the hours where yesterday and tomorrow meet, I'm dancing. This will get me through, and as the cycle goes on, so do I.

I consider the Alice Walker quote: "Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is the proof."

I let my body release the tension it had been holding all week, and badly twist and twirl without the fear that there's a camera capturing the moment; we only exist here and now.

We dance and dance and dance, and when I'm dancing, I'm free; they only win when I stop.

We need to be dancing.

When scrolling isn't enough

So, you want to start building a new world.

Tired of seeing the problem but not having any solutions?

Here are some tips to quiet the doomsday narrative and give you a starting point.

• Know your neighbors and make a fuss about things that infringe on your community.

Go door to door, or forum to forum. Talk to people about what’s lacking in your community. Where are people struggling? How can people help each other?

For example: Across America, Flock, Data centers, and different predatory surveillance technologies appear in our communities as a violation of the vision our founding fathers built for us, not corporations, to revise, remodel, and rebuild.

As they infringe on your rights, remember what’s at stake and who’s at stake: your neighbors, friends, and family. Fight to envision a world made better for them, and you.

More support = more acknowledgment = more community influence = leverage for political support.

• Discover and support more public spaces, resources, and community centers.

With a government more dedicated to funding its own pockets and interests, we’ve gone from a democracy to stakeholders; not even, stakeholders reap the benefits. We are the product.

The growing expenses of all the things that used to be convenient make it easier to disconnect from the online world when you can't own or control anything in it. To take some of that power back means actively going into and understanding the things happening in your community.

What events is your local library holding? What does the community rec hall look like? What's the closest park like? Do you have a community center? Bring friends, bring your family, use the time to connect with new people and enjoy, support, and maintain local/public

• Building yourself, so you can build better community

Community can be twisted into a marketing ploy. It's a danger you have to look out for; when they try to sell you on it, remember the real cost.

The cost of community isn't monetary; This doesn't come by buying an AI companion, or a new phone, or whatever they might try to peddle to you to capitalize on the feeling of loneliness they helped instill. It takes discovering who you are, how you want to show up in your community, and intentionally putting yourself into the world.

The cost of community comes when you help a friend move on your day off, community is when you make dinner for your neighbor. It's asking for help and giving it.

It requires giving a shit about things and people around you.

• Voting (and getting others to vote)

  
  

The outcome of this November's Midterms will make or break a generation.

This November will shape Congress and the legislation it passes. All the complaints about "no one doing anything" stem from who we have across the branches.

Politicians across the aisle take advantage of the rotten system and then spin the blame on us; we fight with each other while they fail the people. It's why you need to vote, canvass, and connect. Be so involved and so annoying about it, because now is not the time for complacency. Use the cop they've trained in your head, not for your fellow man, but for your politicians.

There are resources dedicated to understanding and informing the public on what is happening within the government. Websites like POGO (Project On Government Oversight) investigate and report on government corruption, and GovTrack tracks Congress and White House activities.

Find sources you trust; look at legacy media, new age outlets, and independent journalists. Find the best media that connects with you (that is also reliable); sites like https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ help you determine credibility and understand what you're reading, helping you form a better, more informed opinion by showing you stats and detailed info on bias and factuality.

We have to elect those in power who will give the people back theirs. The way we can do that is by looking into our representatives and elected officials, understanding who they are, how they spend their time in office, and what they intend to do if elected to better serve the people.

We must ask ourselves: how long until these structures, that have been slipped into our nation without knowledge or real functional democratic choice, are used not for us, but against us.

It goes beyond Republican and Democrat; children’s parks are being abandoned for data centers, massive private surveillance companies pop up in our communities without consent, and are abused by law enforcement; our environment, food, water, and air are being sped to destruction by our overwhelming need for growth, leading to far too much damage. And it didn't happen overnight.

November is your chance to change that.

Midterms usually have lower voter turnout, yet the people on the ballot will be making policies that affect you at every level of government. It is a crucial time, so crucial, that you should do all you can to make sure the people around you who can vote will vote.

It'll take a combined, continued effort to get movement started where you are (if it hasn't already). Research candidates and ballot issues through official voter guides and election offices. Be relentless in your pursuit of freedom, even if the voices online want you to think "it's over", to go quiet and admit defeat. Become informed and share the gift of knowledge with your community.

You need to go outside and see who it is you’re fighting for, what it is you’re fighting for. The American dream as we knew it is over, and if we sleep through the construction of a new one at the hands of billionaires, trillionaires, and treasonous government officials, the future could become even more of a nightmare; if we resign ourselves to the fantasy of tech oligarchs, we will not be able to dream up a new day.

• Find your own opinions

Stop listening to the for-you page echo chambers, various hot takes, and planted discourse on social media.

If you want to have discussions and probe new perspectives, get back into the world; take note of your own ideas, morals, and values, read books that interest you, try making things without artificial intelligence, learn something new about yourself every day; and fail until you feel right.

Hope is a radical act these days. Don’t be passive; be angry, be hopeful, be alive in your freedoms so they aren't stripped from you.