Will friction-maxxing save us?

Honestly? Probably not. But maybe we should try it.

Have you noticed just about every facet of normal human life has a catchy label these days?

You’re not going for a stroll around the block, you’re on a Hot Girl Walk. It’s not doing the bare minimum at work, you’re Quiet Quitting. Not looking at your phone while on the bus is now Raw Dogging Your Commute.

Raw dogging used to mean fucking without a condom. I’m strangely sad we’ve lost that.

The more these things are labelled, the more they’re discussed online, the more extreme they become, the more attention they get.

The Looksmaxxing community is a fantastic example. Trying to be hot has always been a fairly common, if solitary, pursuit. But then a bunch of tremendously insecure men made it a community, talked about it on social media, and now people around the world are hitting themselves in the face with hammers.

This behaviour is bizarre, comes with a brand, and is therefore easy to report on. It gets more and more attention. Suddenly hitting yourself in the face with a hammer starts to look more appealing — if only to make it all stop.

But this is just one community in a veritable clown car of stupidity.

All across the internet the ‘maxxing’ suffix is popular. It’s applied to all manner of tasks, and implies that you could be doing something in a more efficient, more extreme way.

There’s work-maxxing and efficiency-maxxing — both spruiking ways to become better little Capitalist worker bees.

On the other side of the coin are communities like whimsy-maxxing and free will-maxxing. The former is about forcing more playfulness into your life, the latter encourages people to live outside of societal expectations.

In every incarnation, the maxxing trends are performative. They are not about the act itself, but its dissemination on social media. Something you can watch while hunched over your phone at midnight, but never personally implement.

It begs the question: if you whimsy-max in a forest, and no one is there to see it, were you ever pretending to be a wood nymph?

I hate it, of course. Save me from performative bullshit and the forced efficiencies of the modern world. Especially save me when the two combine. Disable every forward-facing phone camera. Dole out slaps to the face until people come to their senses. Charge everyone $50 to upload a video on social media.

Yes, for me as well.

I write this as the shadowy Instagram algorithm continues to bless my car videos. I’ll probably hit 20,000 followers this week. I’m equally proud and ashamed. It feels like I’ve become a mildly successful dealer. Sure, it’s nice to have my fingertips brush against the much-coveted chalice of social media fame. But ultimately I’m still peddling meth.

I might not be the one making the drugs, I might not even be the one profiting from them. But that doesn’t stop me from being complicit in the whole dirty operation.

Does long-form writing absolve me of some of my sins? Perhaps a bit? This is a question I’d ponder more if I didn’t spend so much time staring slack-jawed at my own phone. A good dealer should never get high on their own supply, but here we are.

Which brings me to friction-maxxing. It’s a trend that’s a contradiction in terms. It advocates for people adding inefficiencies back into their lives.

If you’re bored, don’t opt for the easiest hit of dopamine and stare at your phone. Instead, read a book. Don’t order olive oil on Deliveroo, do without or pick it up yourself. Don’t send an email or a text, ring the person and talk to them. Better yet, meet up with them. Don’t use Google as a source for information, seek other means. Go to a library. Talk to experts. Reach your own conclusions.

Fight, fight, fight against becoming a big, sloppy tech baby who outsources all their mildly difficult tasks to the screen in their pocket.

Friction-maxxing didn’t use to have a catchy name. It was just how we lived. But though I hate the method of delivery for this message — Instagram largely — on every level I agree.

I’d do anything for a return to the real world. I crave physical media. I crave community. I crave art and study and all the slow skills that take time and patience to learn. I would like to enjoy these things away from audiences and the algorithms that somehow intuit my needs but never fulfil them.

Attention and comfort might feel good, but they’re each like a shot of vodka. The effects quickly wear off and you’re left a little bit worse than when you started.

The things that sustain us, that are good for the soul, that add something to the world, require more effort. But there’s so much noise and distraction these days it’s hard to decipher the shape of our deeper desires.

Will giving up small conveniences like UberEats, Google Maps, and Instagram reels help?

God, who knows? It’s hard to remember what the world looked like before weapons-grade phone technology laid its eggs in everyone’s brain.

But it might be a good place to start.