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CJ the X is yearning for a better internet
The video essayist talks hand-written letters, advocating for a return to Web 1.0, and why your phone addiction isn’t your fault.
Finding their home on YouTube, long-form video essays have flourished since the platform started to prioritise watch-time over views in 2012. They appeared as the internet’s natural evolution of film essays, an established genre of part documentary, part non-fiction films with a history arguably dating back to the early 20th century. In an internet landscape dominated by platforms like Twitter (or X) that limit our thoughts and discourses to 280 characters, it’s no surprise video essays quickly gained popularity. Now, the genre of content is a breeding ground for intellectual content creators to start nuanced conversations on politics, philosophy, media, and culture.
Within the video essayist community, it’s hard to find a creator with a career like CJ’s – one that’s seen them become a self-proclaimed leader in Gen Z’s niche luddite revolution. CJ’s spiral into a digital revolutionary started in the research for their video essay, Bo Burnham vs. Jeff Bezos, which explores Bo Burnham’s doomist comedy special Inside and Jeff Bezos’ user-centred business model. With a network of interlinking tangents, comedic editing, and the same runtime as Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the essay has now racked up 1.4 million views.
In true video essay fashion, CJ brings the two seemingly unrelated topics together to form a bigger-picture argument: that we’ve allowed social media and tech reliance to alter Gen Z’s perception of reality. If you thought we could spend an average of over six hours on our phones daily without changing the way we experience the world, CJ urges you to think again.
The notion that phones are altering our reality seems sensational – something that you’d read on your Mum’s Facebook feed – but CJ argues that it is, in fact, that deep. “You can get this slow, ambient trickle of simulated socialisation through scrolling on Reddit. It’s just enough that makes you not need to go out and look for it. The scroll is designed to eliminate boredom, which is what makes you go outside and talk to people,” they explain. “It's not your fault. Your reality has changed, the world has changed.”
“You can get this slow, ambient trickle of simulated socialisation.”
After the success of Bo Burnham vs. Jeff Bezos, CJ realised that they weren’t alone in their digital disillusionment. “I hit a point with that video that resonated with people very widely and deeply. We all know this feeling of horror and wonder of the phone, that loss of meaning and the degradation of your attention,” CJ says. “And yet I still couldn't articulate – what should we fucking do about it? My video literally ends with ‘touch grass’. No solutions.”
Not satisfied with raising awareness and encouraging luddite-leaning sensibilities, CJ needed action. Three years later, their search for an alternative internet has been chronicled in their book club dubbed ‘Kill the Internet’, where 2000-odd paying Patreon members can discuss the internet-critical works of Jaron Lanier, Jenny Odell, and Neil Postman. Their Patreon also houses interviews with academics, authors, and digital creators that nourish their current research obsession, while their manifestos and think-pieces are published on a free-access website.
“After the Bo Burnham vs. Jeff Bezos video, I swore off talking about that topic again until I could figure out something concrete to say,” they explain. The advantage of using digital platforms like YouTube, Patreon, and Instagram, is that CJ’s message has no problem reaching the home feeds of the ‘chronically online’. Getting our attention was never a problem, it was figuring out what to do with it.
“When you finish one of my videos, I don't want you to binge the next one, I want you to log off for hours. It’s not good for engagement, but I want to create things online that make you get offline,” they continue. “We all know that feeling of wanting to throw your phone in the lake. I want to speak to what’s already in everyone's chest and say, ‘you're right, do something with that, put that somewhere’. I don't want you to just think about it and then Tweet about it.”
As the side of technological advancement hardly needs another advocate, CJ hopes to even out the scales by calling for a radical return to Web 1.0. Their weight is firmly placed on the side that’s holding onto the value of previous technologies. If you’re thinking that CJ’s philosophy is a particularly zealous variation of the IndieWeb movement, you wouldn’t be far off.
“The ideas of Web 1. 0 were great. Personal websites, web rings, emails, newsletters, they were more human,” they say. “Substack and Patreon are great in this lens because of the paywall. Free social platforms use the advertiser model, so their incentive structure is going to be askew towards engagement and addiction.”
However, simply praising platforms that replace advertising with paywalls isn’t good enough for CJ. “You don't need Patreon or Substack to have a newsletter. You can just start your own newsletter. I'm not a fan of solutions that raise one platform above another, I'm interested in solutions that involve no platform,” they continue. “Solutions that are useful for someone that’s poor and addicted to their phone and still needs friends.”
Sorting out the internet is just half of CJ’s solution. The other? Hand-written letters, partner dancing, and communal dinnertime. They argue if we put our energy into creating nourishing offline lives, we’ll stop reaching for quick digital dopamine. Hark back to the early intentions of the internet, and you’ll remember that it was once made as a tool to make our offline lives better, rather than replacing our offline lives altogether.
“Social media can drive us away from becoming an embodied person. If we’re going to share ourselves in the way that social media encourages, we have to actually be someone,” they argue.
“Find a craft, read a book that will make you better at what you do. Go to a dance class. Write a letter and gift it to someone else. Communicate with a loved one without having an advertiser – someone that wants to profit off that exchange – in the room with you,” they say. “Delete the social media apps from your phone so you don’t have a natural intuitive limb to use when you’re taking a shit. Sounds grimy, but it’s true. You should experience taking a shit and having a body.”
If CJ’s philosophy is your cup of tea, join the ‘Kill the Internet’ bookclub here.