Story
The only light in Olivia’s room was the bluish glow of her laptop. She had intended to check Facebook for just a few minutes, but, as she scrolled through endless posts (Alex’s wedding! Daniela’s cats! A stranger’s cats, wearing Halloween costumes! A link to an editorial about Halloween and cultural appropriation!), the algorithm did what the algorithm was designed to do, and she kept reading.
Soon she found herself on the New York Times homepage, reading not only about about the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural exchange, but also about the president’s latest speech, questions about the border, and a recipe for pan de muerto for Day of the Dead, her mind wandering with each headline. One article led to another—now she was diving into a recipe site, then off to a travel blog, her curiosity a relentless current.
Hours passed. Olivia blinked, realizing she hadn’t made a single conscious choice; she was merely drifting. A thought flickered: she’d meant to call Daniela for lunch. She hadn’t seen Daniela for months. But instead, her fingers danced over the keyboard again, and Olivia was drawn to another link, another distraction, forever surfing an endless sea of content, lost but never bored.
Analysis
Olivia is trapped by the internet. She moves from one state (viewing Facebook) to another (viewing the New York Times). These states possess some common qualities that make it easy to transition from one to the other:
- A common physical position – at her keyboard.
- A common emotion – feeling “lost” and “curious” but not “bored.” Olivia is engaged by the sites she visits.
The sites are a sink state for Olivia – meaning that she is trapped by this endless cycle of states. (The word “sink” is a word from the field of mathematics that means a trap.) In this sink state, Olivia experiences learned helplessness as she intuitively expects that efforts to escape the sink state will not be rewarded. Thus, the sink state is the opposite of a nexus state.
The sites are also Learned Layer (LL) states, as hunter gatherers didn’t experience the internet. It’s also possible (depending on what Olivia is reading) that hunter gatherers would not share the sorts of politics, culture, and recipes that Olivia is viewing.
However, if at some point – perhaps during her transitions between sites – she “woke up” and noticed “hey, I’m surfing the internet” then this completely inescapable “sink state” might become a potentially escapable partial sink state.
To notice “hey, I’m surfing the internet” is to completely change Olivia’s experience. I call this denarrativizing because the narrative of “politics and culture, recipe, travel” that is spinning through Olivia’s mind might go away – to be replaced by this new thought. (“Hey, I’m surfing the internet.”). This denarratization (also a renarrativization, since she is replacing one thought or narrative by another) helps Olivia to let go of the sink state. Thinking about one’s experience in words – that is, telling stories or narratives – is an autonomous Default Human Range (DHR) state. Humans evolved to speak a language (dyadically) but then internalized that language into autonomous thought.
The internet and social media are a kind of mental / emotional / bodily trap. They trap your mind (as you intellectually process what you read on social media), your emotions (as you feel anxiety about whether you will get “likes,” i.e. social rejection), and your body (as you are crouched over your laptop). I call these kinds of traps “sinks” both because that is the mathematical word for this kind of trap, and because you may “sink” into them, unable to escape.
One approach for dealing with this is to find a time when you are partly stuck in the internet but also partly in control. For instance, Olivia might choose a moment when she is transitioning from reading one site (say, Facebook) to another (say, the New York Times). This transition state is a “partial” sink state – she is in between being in control and not being in control. She is not entirely caught in any particular state. At that point, she can develop an awareness that she is making this transition, which helps her to denarrativize or renarrativize her experience of the internet.
In this case, the DHR state involves a narrative that puts Olivia in a positive discursive state. It is not limited to the narrative “politics and culture, recipe, travel”, to the physical position “at the keyboard”, and to the emotion “lost and curious.” In this sense, Olivia’s is able to think (or talk to herself) freely, which is DHR because humans evolved to engage in discussion.
By denarrativizing / renarrativizing her internet experience, Olivia develops a pleasure in the new narratives. This gives her an expectation that effort will lead to pleasure, creating what I call a “nexus” state. The nexus state promotes agency or self-control; it often builds on DHR states.
The nexus state connects to many other states – talking to a friend, going out for coffee, and so on. The nexus state can lead to many different possible versions of Olivia’s self – versions which Olivia can choose between.
Vocabulary
- State: a particular situation of one’s mind, emotions, and body
- Sink state: low self control
- Partial sink state: moderate self control
- Nexus state: high self control
- Denarrativize: to remove the narrative from a state (e.g. to stop ruminating or to let go of a particular interpretation).
- Renarrativize: to remove the narrative from a state and supply a new narrative.
Nexus State Theory 