field notes from a phone-free future

There is a countercultural revolution spreading across the United States. It has many faces that have been widely documented but poorly understood. It is “high agency,” but not in the Silicon Valley sense, because it is also highly techno-pessimist.

The coalition includes, but is not limited to:

• New York City Neo-Luddites

• Data center NIMBYs

• Crunchy MAHA moms

• Jonathan Haidt disciples

• Post-rationalists

• Spiritual and religious revivalists

• Anti-AI populists

• Third space advocates

• Anybody refusing to use social media

• Anybody using a “dumbphone”

The revolution means different things to different people, but it can best be categorized by its refusal to be categorized. The movement rejects rational optimization to embrace the subjective, irrational, and emotional.

The revolution will not be clipped into digestible short-form video.

It will not wear Apple watches and Aura rings.

It will not track your step count.

The revolution will not be on Partiful;

It does not care who attends the function.

There will be no Instagram posts of private equity-owned boba,

No six-week financing with Afterpay.

Letters, not Letterboxd,

Good reads, not Goodreads.

The revolution will not be discounted on Uber Eats.

It will not require a USB-C adapter; it will power itself.

Roses will be given without Hinge,

Messages will disappear without Snapchat.

Tuned in, not LinkedIn,

Tapped in, not Untappd.

The revolution will not be stored in a data center.

It will not appear in an AI overview,

measuring every angle and orifice with cold metal instruments.

There will be no peptides or ozempic.

There will be no Slack notifications,

Email notifications,

Text notifications,

New York Times notifications.

The revolution does not come with paywalls and mini-games.

It will not have Fubo or Tubi or Pluto.

It will not have unlimited storage; there is nothing to store.

The Amazon is a river,

Google is a number,

and Apples are for eating.

The revolution will not be on Kalshi or Polymarket.

It will not monitor the situation;

The revolution is the situation.

There will be no estimated ETA.

There will be no blinking blue location.

You won’t have to know where you are; there is nothing to know.

If you want to Find Your Friends, just Be Real.

Groups chat without groupchats,

Voices call without voicecalls.

The revolution will be liked and shared without likes and shares.

It lives without livestreams,

and is content without content.

“I” exists without “phone.”

Spotify will be deleted, not wrapped.

The revolution will not rate things out of five stars;

It is one with the stars.

There will be no Venmo requests.

There will be no two-step verification;

you don’t need proof of who you already are.

The Revolution is representation against representation. It sees our attempts to categorize meaning as meaningless. All the information in the world, compiled into a Borgesian Library of Babel, would be utterly useless. Better, then, to make your own meaning: fighting for what you want rather than what you’re supposed to want.

The Revolution will change the world, and change nothing. It bottlenecks our desires into a cathartic outpouring against the machine, but will eventually leave us adrift again—searching for the real answer within.