radical analog-ism

At the beginning of the year, my good friend Pan asked me a question that I’ve been mulling over for several weeks now. He asked me, “is your happiness natty?” Naturally, this spurred a personal line of inquiry into what exactly we can define as “natty,” versus what we cannot. I’ve categorized these things into three non-exhaustive working lists:

Natty: Coffee, sunshine, exercise, music/books/movies, marijuana (carts not included).

Not natty: Fast fashion, personal devices, alcohol (beer and wine excepted).

Jury’s out: Home appliances (fridges, dishwashers, etc.), pharmaceutical medication.

Of course, this aligned with a surge in “analog” content circulating social media, especially in the new year. Much of this content is, debatably, not analog at all, because in spite of it showing “analog” activities like taking notes on paper or using a DVD instead of a streaming service, those activities are still being recorded and posted for the panoptical gaze of Instagram.com. One might call it a fetishization of the analog, masquerading a commitment to a movement or ideology while your practice in such subsists through the very media it supposedly counteracts. But I digress.

What these questions have got me thinking about is a sort of radical nattiness, or radical analog-ism (not analogism, which is a different thing). What are some things that lie on the fringes of our habits, but could arguably benefit from a vacuuming of digital or attention-grabbing technologies?

The entire thing that inspired this post was a question I came to in a bar with some friends from school. A hockey game was on, and two players were brawling, and it popped into my head; “is physical fighting an analog practice?” We pondered. I have come to believe it is, and that physical fighting is, in many ways, better for you than cyberfights are. When you physically fight someone, the energy has somewhere to go, there’s a tangible conclusion and a level of catharsis involved. There is also a shared intimacy with the person that you’re fighting—no matter how frustrated you may be at each other, from an outsider’s perspective, you are both creatures putting yourselves in danger. You both risk the bloody nose. Online, comments circulate and stew and the energy has nowhere to go, there is no sharing or catharsis, and blood is far more prone to run from wrists than noses. Physical fighting hurts more in the moment but it has a conclusion that can be easily traced back to its inception. It is a closed circuit. It also induces more growth because it forces you to stand your ground and lay your body on the line for something you believe in. It is your face, your chest, your feet you stand upon. No hiding behind a burner account irl.

I’m talking about smoking vs vaping here. Or rather, vaping vs everything else. I’ve talked to several of my friends about how vaping is such an attention-economy-Gen-Z coded form of nicotine (or marijuana) consumption because it requires no focus, no diversion, and no time. It can be done whenever, wherever (depending how bold you are), as much or as little as you like. On the contrary, smoking a joint, cigarette, pipe, bong, or what-have-you requires attention. You have to light it. You have to stand there, often improperly dressed for the weather, until it burns out. Sure, you can flick it away after one drag, but there’s waste (materially and financially) that results as a consequence. It’s almost like the desktop computer vs the cell phone—the computer used to occupy a specific place within one’s house, one’s life, and it did not leave that place. It could be left and returned to. The cell phone changed this—mobile, subservient, it follows you everywhere and consumes your world.

Furthermore, although I personally believe that vapes are simply worse, I understand a lot of people like them for the fun flavours. I see this as hedonistic. An indulgence like a joint or a cigarette is made better because it’s a bit uncomfortable—it burns, it tastes bad, etc. This is why I believe that smoking is the best when it’s done in the winter. The summer is far more comfortable, yes, but the discomfort amplifies the indulgence.

By analog sex, I do not mean giving up toys or implements or whatever you may enjoy. I think all of us sex positivists can agree that vibrators are one of the better inventions to come out of the digital age. I am talking about porn. The more mature and obtuse of a feminist I become the more I believe porn—specifically corporate, digitized porn—is a poison in the sexual development of youth and is likely to ruin your perception of yourself, your perception of others, and your perception of and relationship to sex as an act or activity if you consume it even semi-regularly.

Note that there are certainly exceptions to this rule, and I don’t think all porn is bad (although I’m certainly no aficionado). Things like erotica or smut, porn magazines or pinup photos, even amateur porn is better than the kind of degenerated mass-produced video bile that circulates on PornHub and Reddit. In saying we should analogize our consumption of hardcore sex media I do not mean an absolute unplug, but rather, a more committed effort to understanding what this media does and how it makes us feel.

Also, even if you don’t buy this (which I will concede to), you can’t make an argument that the porn industry doesn’t suck. If for no other reason, stop watching industry porn because you have any semblance of respect for others.

This one isn’t quite so pressing, but it offers an important theoretical import. Although it carries other definitions, the term “natty” upon which this particular letter is predicated was popularized by fitness enthusiasts referring to athletes who are “natural,” meaning they bulk without using steroids or artificial substances. What exactly is defined as an artificial substance could be up for debate. But the analogization I am talking about here is basically just a case against tracking. Through FitBit, Strava, your phone, whatever. As much as I enjoy looking back on my step count, as many of us do, I believe we have gotten too comfortable with tracking our bodily functions, especially on apps that store and sell your data. Perhaps it’s not the smartest thing to publicize your running route through Strava?

On a more subtle note, I had a conversation with my mom about how she is tracking her sleeping habits. She told me she’d encountered this strange phenomenon in which she’d wake up, think she had a good sleep, then check her metrics in whichever sleep-tracking software she uses and see that, in fact, she only got X amount of REM. It made her question her body’s intuition. There’s a decent amount of literature on this already, especially in the health and rhetoric space. And of course, this one gets a little more complicated, because there are instances in which I can imagine keeping a close eye on your health metrics is a good, or even necessary thing. But most of us don’t need to track our running routes through an app, and we don’t need to take exactly 10000 steps every day to be healthy.

I understand the move towards analog-ness that is sweeping social media right now but I think we need to be more critical and more imaginative with how “going analog” manifests in our lives. Most importantly, there is power in doing something without anyone knowing about it. In a world in which the majority of us are constantly surveilled, I consider it a series of small victories to engage with a hobby or carry out an action in the privacy of your own life. I am by no means against sharing when it comes to work or ideas, because the sharing in such a context acts as a means to an end, a method to proliferate the idea or work such that it matures in the minds of others. What I oppose is sharing for sharing’s sake, recording every move you make and publishing it for no other reason than having other people observe you. If we are really to reclaim analog-ism, we must get more comfortable with being alone in an ecosystem that is perpetually offering us malevolent company.