For the past few months I’ve been obsessed with dumb phones, which for anyone who doesn’t know, is a featureless phone used to help curb the ravenous addiction we have with our smartphones.

In the beginning, I thought this was an amazing idea and way to find more presence in my day-to-day life. So I purchased an old school flip-phone and immediately began using it.

It was a black Nokia 2720 and all it could do was make calls and receive text messages. There was no social media, and no distractions. It was almost the perfect way to make a graceful exit from the grips of modern day technology.

That was until I needed to live here, in the real world, and not just in this romanticised anti-technological reality that ignored the fact we have things like QR codes we need to scan at airports, and two-factor authentication apps we need on a day-to-day basis.

I can understand the desire to live more intentionally and create a distraction-free environment for ourselves, but the truth of the matter is, the world is becoming more digital each and every day, and resisting this change only puts you at a disadvantage.

I thought I could buy the answer to my problem, and not actually do the internal work it takes to shift my relationship to my devices.

I even went as far as almost spending upwards of $500 on one of the high-end dumb phones with slightly more features, in hopes of finally finding my digital zen.

But none of the high-end dumb phones did exactly what I needed. I wished for a phone with a black and white display, access to my banking, 2FA apps, a camera, maps, and my music.

And then it hit me, you’re actually a fucking dumb cunt. You already have the perfect device, and it’s called The iPhone. You literally already have everything you need in your pocket, you’re just not able to control yourself so you try to outsource the problem to a worse device.

It’s ironic that the origin of the dumb phone is rooted deep within minimalism, when using one of these dumb devices actually forces you to use more devices.

If anything the real minimalist phone is the iPhone. It can do everything, and more, and I think that’s exactly where we can find the core of the real issue.

Which is what you may ask?

It’s the fact we can’t control ourselves when infinity is served to us on a plate. We’re digital gluttons who have become overwhelmed with the infinite items on the menu. We think just because we can have whatever we want, we should.

But no one’s forcing us to do any of this. And as much as we could argue, the ones setting up shop entice us with their bright lights, at the end of the day, we’re the willing participants who’ve freely entered with their own two feet.

It’s easy to forget that we can get up and leave. No one’s forcing you to be here. You’ve chosen this reality, and if you can’t control yourself on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, that’s on you, you dumb cunt.