It’s January, which means—if you’re like me—your inbox has recently been flooded with year-end lists: all the books everyone read, the films everyone watched, the Substacks everyone’s subscribing to.
I don’t think the internet is uniformly bad for everyone. I think it’s differentially toxic depending on your relationship to creation. If you’re largely a passive consumer, social media and year-end roundups can be helpful discovery tools. But if you’re trying to make something? They’re a direct attack on the conditions necessary for creativity.
Creators need boredom. They need space to themselves. Time to just be in their own minds. Not as a luxury, but as a necessity.
The empty space of boredom is the petri dish where creative integration happens. When you’re bored, your subconscious is processing what it couldn’t when your were more actively focused on things. It’s connecting. Synthesizing. This is where the good stuff comes from - not from more outside input, but from the space to let what’s already in you bubble up.
But if you’re filling that space with “catching up” on everyone else’s content? You’re done. You’ve shut down the lab. You’re just consuming, not creating. Your brain is in input mode, not output.
There was a thinker named René Girard who taught about mimetic desire - how we want what others want, how we compare ourselves to “models” who show us what’s worth pursuing. (Yes, Girardian philosophy is its own rabbit hole.) He claims that mimesis (mimicking each other) is how the human animal is wired. We all latch onto a ‘model’ and mimic them. It’s why Nike is huge. (“Like Mike. If I could be like Mike.” Any fellow 90s teens hear the jungle?) It’s why social media is a multui-gajillion dollar industry. Etc.
A normal dose of mimetic models is normal. We can’t help but be this way. And it has its benefits—it’s how we learn. It’s how we get inspired. We copy our heroes when we’re starting out.
But the internet gives us an overdose of models. An endless stream of people doing impressive things, reading impressive things, creating impressive work. And year-end lists are like a mainline hit of comparison fodder. Your ego latches onto them and beats you over the head: “Look at all the things you didn’t read! Look at how much more they consumed than you! Look at how much more impressive their work is!”
It’s not just unhelpful for creators. It’s actively destructive to the creative process.
A few years ago, I accidentally deleted all my friends on Instagram. I unfollowed all my internet heroes. I’d fallen into extreme Girardian mimicry - not a healthy “learning from mentors” dose, but a toxic “measuring myself against everyone” overdose. I had to go cold turkey.
Here’s the thing: I did it wrong. I didn’t tell anyone I was unfollowing them or why. I just did a mass unfollow. A few months later, I heard through the grapevine that some of them thought I disliked them.
Not great. Turns out ghosting your friends on social media without explanation feels... ghosty. Who knew?
But the point is this: I didn’t unfollow them because I disliked them! Just the opposite, actually! I unfollowed them because I really liked them! So much so that I was trying to be like them and measure every step I took to theirs, etc. It was too much.
Anyhow… After I worked through that awkwardness and did some inner work on my own propensity to merge (enneagram 9 here) and compare: My voice came back. The weird particular thing I’m supposed to write became audible again. And eventually, after getting really solid about my online boundaries and use, I re-followed a lot of them. But this time from a healthier place.
I’m convinced creators need to treat the internet differently than passive consumers. Not because we’re special or precious, but because the conditions for creativity are different than the conditions for consumption.
Cal Newport is right: get social media off your phone. Get email off your phone. (Yes, Substack is now social media.) Create friction between you and the endless stream of what everyone else is doing.
Not because you’re better than them. Because you need to hear your own voice. You need to let your own soul’s expression bubble up. And that requires space - the kind of space that scrolling obliterates.
Of course, there’s the elephant in the room here with us. If you’re reading this and thinking, “Wait, does this mean I should unsubscribe from Jonas?” The answer is: maybe! And that’s completely okay. Great, even.
I openly encourage people to drop in and out of my work as often as they like. I don’t get notifications for unsubscribes. Turned those off long ago. Please ghost me, it’s fine. I actually see it as a gift - I don’t have to worry about bothering people because I know you have full capacity to hit that little “unsubscribe” or “subscribe” button whenever you want.
Here’s the thing I’ve learned: unfollowing can actually preserve relationship. I’ve had to unfollow some of my old heroes who turned into friends. Again, my adoration of them ventured into comparison, and then - ugly as this is to admit - into disdain. Not healthy. Not fair to them. Not fair to me.
Unfollowing them restored the connection. I’m not constantly comparing myself to them anymore. I’m not reading their work through the filter of “why can’t I write like that?” or “why do they get more attention than I do?” (Okay, fine, maybe a little 🤣)
Now I can go seek out their work when I find myself genuinely curious about what they’ve been up to. But I’m not getting flooded with daily fodder to compare myself to them. The friendship is healthier. My creative life is healthier. And I can actually appreciate their work again instead of resenting it.
This isn’t about building walls or going full hermit mode. It’s about curating your attention with the same care you’d curate your creative workspace. You wouldn’t let someone dump a pile of art supplies in the middle of your desk every day and insist you look through them. Why let the internet do the same with content?
So this is me, in January 2026, recommitting to the unfollow. To protecting boredom. To choosing presence over FOMO. To writing my weird small thing instead of trying to keep up with everyone else’s impressive thing.
And I’m inviting other creators to consider the same. Maybe that anxiety you feel isn’t telling you you’re not enough. Maybe it’s telling you that you need to protect your attention, limit your inputs, and trust that your particular voice matters - even if it never makes anyone’s “best of” list.
The internet wants you consuming. But creation requires something else entirely: the courage to be bored, the discipline to unfollow, and the faith that what wants to come through you is worth protecting.