My point is that the mainstream is no longer defined by cultural touchstones, it is defined by platforms. Regardless of your feed, scrolling through twitter because you may find a funny sentence or interesting recommendation is not that different from watching hours of TV hoping for that one good commercial. The only real difference is that no one watches TV anymore.

So when we get tired of this mainstream world of competitive likes, shallow "content", and time-sucking consumption, we decide to try going offline. We "step away" from the internet, deactivate our Facebook account, go outside to eat an apple and stare at a squirrel and say aloud to no one how much better this life is. But this never lasts, because it is unreasonable today to try to live without the internet. It is like deciding to live without running water: it's possible, but extreme, and makes all other aspects of modern life harder.