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Josh Czuba wants to help you out of the doomscroll
Meet @josh.czuba, the content creator helping his audience survive (and maybe even thrive) in the dopamine-fuelled age of information.
But scattered around the digital void, there are a select few content creators that aren’t interested in keeping you in a doomscroll – one of them being Josh Czuba. With 575k combined Instagram and TikTok followers and 4.2 million likes on TikTok, it looks like Gen Z have been waiting for a creator that can take them by the hand and guide them out of their bedrotting depression pit – rather than pushing them deeper in.
If you’ve ever come across one of Josh’s videos on a leisurely scroll through Instagram or TikTok, its likely his fast-paced, inspirational monologues made you reconsider swiping on to the next video. It may have even caused you to put down your phone. Josh is on a mission to equip his viewers against all manners of vices that offer instant gratification, but his holy grail is ‘humanising the internet’.
While Josh’s advice centres on how to ‘take control of your narrative’. he’s careful not to slip into the typical self-help genre by putting blame on the individual. “It's not your fault that you were born into an information economy like this one,” he explains. “You were not psychologically prepared to handle this onslaught of information and overstimulation. But it is your responsibility to figure it out because no one else is going to come to save you,” – which is what Josh tries to help his viewers do.
Josh’s wariness at crossing the line to becoming a self-help preacher stems from his own experience with the gendered self-improvement corner of the internet. If you’re wondering why you’re unfamiliar with this digital neighbourhood, it’s probably because you’ve never downloaded Reddit. “In high school I was exposed to that self-improvement programming. I think a lot of guys are, that self-improvement aesthetic of American Psycho and Fight Club.” This masculine side of the self-improvement industry idealises getting into good physical, mental, and financial shape. “Those things are great on their own, but present negative self-talk which I’ve had to work through.”
Chances are, when you become disillusioned with one industry that puts financial gain over wellbeing – like the digital technology industry – you’ll start seeing these bungled priorities everywhere: including the industry that claims to have your best interest at heart. “Self-improvement and digital technology, they prop each other up,” Josh says. “The people who built social media platforms were just trying to make the best product, but the framework they were using was what makes the most money. And it's in the best interest of the whole self-improvement industry to keep you feeling shame and guilt, because that's when you're in a buying state of self-help products.”
Nowadays, most of us are aware of the toxicity of our phone addictions. The problem is, the addictive techniques used by digital technology renders most of us useless at doing anything about it, either through personal changes or by disrupting our collective internet culture. Josh is one of the Gen Z creators that have volunteered to act as leader for the long journey out of this mess, so where is he trying to guide us?
“In a perfect world, I don't want people to stop scrolling,” he comments. “Even if I did, it's not going to happen. We've opened Pandora's box and now this is where attention is, this is where information is.” A self-proclaimed ‘pragamatic optimist’, Josh’s solutions are moderate and practical.
“Rather than abandoning the tech, I'd rather nourish the stream. You can think about social media right now as a semi-polluted stream of information where you're getting hit with a lot of very empty, shallow content that allows you to function as a chronic consumer,” he says. “If you have creators who are committed to creating stuff that's meaningful in some way, we can finally have some balance.”
“I view us as internet ancestors. Future generations will look back on us as the ones who figured this out, but we’re having some growing pains.”
The spectrum of resolutions to our internet-rooted problems is wide: some people are reverting to flip phones, others are advocating for new and better platforms, while some are fighting to get rid of centralised platforms all together. Josh’s stance is to go with the flow of technology, rather than resist it. “Just look at the tide, look at how fast it's moving, how much momentum it has,” he says. “And that's not hopeless at all. You have to look at the things that you have control over, which is your attention. That's a beautiful thing to control, because if you don't want to look, you don't have to.”
He continues: “I view us as internet ancestors. Future generations will look back on us as the ones who figured this out, but we’re having some growing pains. There’s not one solution for this. The internet is infinite, and it’s infinitely personalized. We’re going to see a huge fractal explosion of different ideas.”
Rather than reaching for quick-fix solutions, Josh is happy doing his part in the internet’s long maturing process – helping users to fix their relationship with tech, one little TikTok at a time.