3 Bad Habits I Broke When I Quit Instagram
I quit Instagram three years ago. It took experiencing the withdrawal symptoms to see the bad habits that had become normal.
Twitter is cocaine. Silicon Valley-manufactured "Black Twitter" is crack cocaine.
Professional sports are experiencing a crack epidemic. The athletes, executives, and leagues are addicted to or live in fear of "Black Twitter," the allegedly informal community of Twitter users and bots who portray themselves as black.
Crack Twitter, my name for Black Twitter, is the online gatekeeper of the degenerate culture Hollywood and music industry executives have defined for black people.
Cocaine damages the brain. The drug, in the worst-case scenario, causes an insatiable dopamine addiction. Lucky cocaine users can handle an occasional powder "bump" at parties. Unlucky users, particularly those who freebase cocaine (crack), develop schizophrenia and paranoia and fall into prolonged depression.
The clearest sign of social media crack addiction is the paranoid user who constantly rants, raves, and tweaks about racism terrorizing every aspect of his life.
Olympic hammer thrower Gwen Berry heard the national anthem playing and screamed that it was a disrespectful, racist setup. ESPN basketball analyst Jay Williams greeted the news of the Celtics hiring their sixth black head coach by hailing it as a historic first for black people.
Not to be outdone, on Monday, Williams' ESPN colleague Jalen Rose taped a rambling, do-rag-wearing, hair-greasing, hair-combing non-apology for racially smearing Kevin Love's selection to the Olympic basketball team. You should hunt down Rose's Instagram live video. It's 45 minutes of unintentional comedy. It's like watching Pookie from the movie "New Jack City" explain quantum physics.
But NBA legend Scottie Pippen was Monday's biggest tweaker. Pip appeared on "The Dan Patrick Radio Show." He accused his former coach, Phil Jackson, of racism for drawing up a game-winning shot for Toni Kukoc in a 1994 playoff game against the Knicks.
That game and that moment form the lone stain on Pippen's exemplary playing career. Pippen refused to re-enter the game because of Jackson's play call. Kukoc sank the shot with Pippen sulking on the bench. Pippen should quit drawing attention to the infamous moment he quit on his teammates.
His social media addiction won't allow it. He's now resorted to racially smearing the coach who helped him win six NBA titles.
I blame Twitter and social media. I'm not joking. Social media apps are driving the racial hysteria plaguing the country. From actor Jussie Smollett's hoax to NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace's garage-door noose to basketball star LeBron James' paranoid tweet about being afraid to walk outside, Crack Twitter is responsible for the race-bait pandemic. Twitter algorithms are constructed to release massive numbers of dopamine likes, retweets, and follows for racial accusations.
Pippen has 660,000 Twitter followers and 1.7 million Instagram followers. He feels pressure to deliver dopamine-friendly content to his 2.3 million social media followers. There's no better product than race bait. It's the coca leaf of cocaine.
Pippen, Rose, and Williams are all good dudes. They're not ill-intentioned. They don't have a legit problem with white people. They certainly don't have a problem with the fruit (women) of the white tree.
Social media hacked their brains.
Twenty years from now, America will be flooded with documentaries explaining how Silicon Valley algorithms promoted and rewarded racial conflict.
I feel sorry for these guys. They're unaware they have an addiction. I have the same addiction. Most public figures suffer from Twitter addiction, and the Crack Twitter addiction is most pronounced among black public figures. The first and most important step toward recovery is admitting you have the problem.
Once you admit the problem, then you can see how it perverts your thoughts and causes you to see every human interaction through the lens of racism. Once you admit the problem, then you can take steps to combat the problem.
Back to Pippen.
Phil Jackson likely drew up the game's final play for Kukoc because he assumed Anthony Mason, arguably the league's top defensive player at the time, would be defending Pippen. Or maybe Jackson had a gut feeling Kukoc would make the shot. Great coaches have great instincts.
I understand Pippen's frustration. The Chicago Bulls took advantage of him in contract negotiations. Pippen was having the best season of his career. It was his first time playing outside Michael Jordan's shadow. Jordan had retired to pursue baseball. And Pippen saw Kukoc as a possible down-the-road threat to his ascension as Chicago's top player.
I get it.
Phil Jackson is as flawed as every other human being. I'm sure he has his biases. But a racist? That allegation is way too damaging to just toss out willy-nilly. What baits us to do that?
Twitter. Racial demonization is the app's lifeblood.
For far too long, we've tolerated a media ecosystem that demands we all snort or freebase Twitter's cocaine. Google, the all-powerful Silicon Valley search engine, defines public figures by their Twitter feeds. Punch a public figure's name into Google, and the first or second thing that pops up is usually his or her Twitter feed.
Researchers say 20 percent of Americans use Twitter. I bet at least 95 percent of the American media use Twitter. The app has an outsized impact on defining public figures and shaping how the media present reality. The app distorts reality. Nothing has done more to create the false reality that police are executing a genocidal plot against black men than Twitter's algorithms.
Cocaine is an auditory hallucinogen. Modern athletes are high on social media. This second-wave crack epidemic is worse than the first.
We need a war on Crack Twitter.