Rewrite Reality: Stop Feeding the System

Welcome to Rewrite Reality, where we peel back the layers of how we imagine our world

— then explore what it means to build different futures.

I’m Gregg the Artivist. And on today’s episode, we’ll dive into Stop Feeding the System!

Join me to reflect, 

challenge assumptions

and spark possibility. 

Thanks for being here

— let’s get into it.

There’s a quiet economy most of us don’t see.

It doesn’t sell products first — it sells us: our time, attention, moods, and relationships. 

The more we scroll, the more it eats. The more numb we feel, the more it craves.

We tell ourselves: I need Twitter?X for news. I need Facebook for friends. Instagram for creativity. WhatsApp for groups. LinkedIn for opportunities. 

But the real, and somewhat harder question here is: at what cost?

I really want to break these platforms down so indulge me for this moment please:

Twitter/X promises “the conversation.”

But independent audits and EU monitoring have found it saturated with disinformation and hate since guardrails were stripped back. That isn’t “free speech”; it’s a business model that profits from outrage, confusion, and division. And when confusion wins, community loses.

Facebook & Instagram by Meta promise connection and creativity. 

Yet again and again, internal documents and outside researchers show teen safety failures and inflammatory recommendation loops. When the algorithm nudges vulnerable young people toward harm, that isn’t connection — it’s extraction. And Meta has been called out by investigators for its role amplifying hate in real-world atrocities. That isn’t an accident; it’s what happens when engagement is the North Star.

WhatsApp promises private chats.

End-to-end encryption does protect activists — and that does matters. But encrypted virality can also supercharge rumours and mob violence when platforms don’t investigate or invest in safety and context. Tools aren’t neutral; they inherit the values of the systems that deploy them.

And LinkedIn by Microsoft promises jobs and opportunity. 

Opportunity is real — and for many, essential. But we should also be honest: Big Tech revenue and cloud growth are deeply entangled with oil & gas expansion. Microsoft’s long-running partnerships help majors like Chevron and SLB optimise exploration and production. “Digital transformation” it sounds clean — until you realise it accelerates extraction in a burning world.

So here’s the moral tension: 

Is a little reach, a little convenience, a little dopamine worth fuelling systems that actively destabilise truth, mental health, and a liveable planet?

I’m not saying we’re all equal in what we can do. We aren’t. 

Some of us rely on these platforms for income, for safety, for visibility — and that matters. 

This isn’t about purity; it’s about pattern.

If you can afford the time and money to be “premium” on a platform such as Linkedin, maybe you can afford to make different choices, too — choices that grow your work without feeding the very machine we’re trying to change.

For me, deciding to leave wasn’t just a tech decision; it was an ethical one. 

I realised the places I went to “connect” were training me to react, not to relate. Shorter attention. Bigger outrage. Smaller imagination.

So I started building elsewhere: longer-form conversations, in-person circles, and spaces we steward together — including the Gregg the Artivist app — where the goal is depth, not dopamine.

And here’s the piece we don’t say out loud enough: these aren’t neutral tools. They’re billionaire machines. 

Every like, every post, every “connection” props up empires built on exploitation — of workers, of data, of truth itself.

We tell ourselves we’re just “users.” But we’re also the product. And in some cases, we’re the fuel.

So the question becomes: is the convenience worth it? 

Is finding a job on LinkedIn worth contributing to the profit streams of a corporation partnering with oil giants while the world burns?

Is the chance of going viral on Instagram worth knowing the same company ignored internal warnings about teen safety?

These aren’t abstract questions anymore. They’re moral ones.

I I invite us to take a small action this week:

To do a 24-hour feed fast. No algorithmic timelines.

Then make one shift you can sustain: 

Such as, disable push notifications for one platform, or 

unfollow 25 rage-bait accounts, or

set a daily time cap that respects your mind. 

If you must stay for work, create guardrails: a posting window, a weekly audit, a path to migrate people into healthier spaces via newsletter, or a community hub, or a local group.

My hardest hurdle wasn’t technical — it was emotional. I worried I’d lose people. But the ones who truly wanted community came closer. The space I recovered became the soil for better conversations — and better work.

So my reflective question this week is:

If your attention is soil, what do you want it to grow — and which platforms actually help that growth in you and around you?

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Rewrite Reality. 

If this resonated, I’d love to hear from you, so please do leave a comment wherever you’re listening. What are you feeling? What came up for you? What’s your take on today’s topic? And consider sharing it with someone who might also be thinking deeply about the world around them.

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Until next time — it’s bye from me for now.