Six months ago, just as the winter of 2025 was creeping in, I noticed that along with the influx of sweater ads, there was a new addition to my Instagram feed: carousel posts that were titled ‘things to read instead of doomscrolling.’ Or some combination thereof; things to watch, do or consume, but crucially, instead of doomscrolling. Screen fatigue has been a point of discussion in both digital and non-digital spaces for a couple of years of now, and those of us who work in culture writing or trends forecasting have been speaking about the ‘anti-brainrot movement,’ the popularity of ‘touching grass’ and the ‘rise of tactile hobbies and hobby clubs’ for a few years before that, too. I, who had spent the past couple of years thinking and writing a book about growing up with the internet in India, agree with both the presence and its actualisation of the desire to become more offline.
In my book, Never Logged Out (published by Bloomsbury), I call this the ‘touching grass fan club’. ‘I believe that the rising anti-internet sentiment brewing in a few corners of the internet—the ‘touching grass fan club’—resonates with Gen Z because we know how it feels to exist offline. After all, we did. A lot of nostalgia that is emanating from these online places is based on the realisation that one day, we logged onto the internet. And then we never logged out. The monumental consequences of that decision are becoming ever clear to us, but for those of us who remember how our brains and lives felt when we logged out, these consequences don’t live on statistical charts, but in our actual memory. We remember what being on the internet used to feel like. An internet that was smaller, safer, and infinitely more intentional. And it doesn’t feel like that anymore,’ I write in my book. Combine this nostalgia with increasing research about the psychosocial effects of a digital life and a rise in ‘curator culture’ online, and you have people making and reading lists of what they could (and should) be doing instead of scrolling (which, funnily, is the very thing they are doing at the moment).
Five months later, ‘things to read instead of doomscrolling’ is more prevalent than ever. I conducted an informal poll on my Instagram Stories and found out that many people in my circle have been seeing more carousels about that and more people making those lists. ‘Things to read/do instead of doomscrolling’ follows a format: a title slide with a colourful background and the headline in a catchy font, and then 8-10 slides with screenshots of various Substack essays, books, movies, YouTube videos. If you comment ‘links,’ the caption says, the person who posted the carousel will send all those essays to your inbox. Convenient, quick and easily bookmarkable. Chances are, you comment. Great for the algorithm, which then boosts that post. You get the links. Maybe you even read a few of them. And then… what? You stop doomscrolling? Or do you doomscroll more, and wait for the next carousel, the next set of links to essays? Do you remember what you read last week? Do you even remember which essays you have in your bookmarks? Or are you just replacing one form of mindless content consumption with another?
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: vogue.in
