**”I’m as furious as ever, and I’m not going to accept it anymore.”**
That memorable phrase from *Network*, Paddy Chayefsky’s sharp 1976 Oscar-winning satire, continues to echo today. In the movie, unhinged news anchor Howard Beale (portrayed by Peter Finch) encourages his audience to shout it from their windows, and his television network capitalizes on the ensuing outrage for gain. Almost fifty years later, Beale appears less like a madman and more like a seer — not merely of television but of the social media era.
Indeed, Beale’s fury might be the one element that bridges both sides of today’s political chasm, which has only widened online between the 2016 and 2024 U.S. presidential elections. We no longer agree on fundamental truths, yet we all share one sentiment: we’re enraged with the opposing side. We’re “mad as hell” and will no longer endure their nonsense. The internet has morphed into a battlefield where we seek out those deemed “wrong” and ridicule them.
However, after the 2024 election, it’s time to pause. While we prepare for the tangible challenges that lie ahead, we must remember a vital lesson from Howard Beale: it’s not a route to political efficacy. In fact, it can leave you feeling *miserable* as hell, in addition to drained and unwell. You ought to stop tolerating it.
Beale’s spiral into insanity turned him into a pawn, his unfiltered, unfocused rage taken advantage of by a media empire. The network stripped away any hint of decency from his broadcast, morphing it into a nightly display of rants and breakdowns. Ultimately, Beale was pressured into echoing the network owner’s vision of unbridled capitalism. And in the conclusion — well, no spoilers for those who haven’t viewed the film, but let’s say Beale’s contract is ended in an exceedingly harsh manner.
If we aim to circumvent a reality filled with countless Howard Beales, the first move is to *cease* the shouting — and the doomscrolling that feeds into it. It’s not just that every click and scroll is enriching billionaires, especially post a divisive election. It’s that doomscrolling is crippling, and the one thing your causes truly need is for you to *not* be immobilized.
### How I Stopped Fretful Thinking and Left Social Media
In the closing years of the first Trump administration, I delved into the history of [self-care as a political act](https://mashable.com/article/self-care-history). The conclusion was straightforward: self-care isn’t about retreats, spas, or Instagram-worthy experiences. It’s about nurturing your spirit so you can be a more effective citizen, capable of assisting the marginalized in society.
Yet as I recounted that story to friends who were exhausted or frightened by the 2024 election results, I realized I hadn’t been adhering to my own counsel. Twitter had morphed into my substance of choice, a platform I convinced myself was necessary for work, even while I distanced myself from Facebook. The outcome? I, too, had turned mad as hell. Even after a billionaire acquired Twitter and rebranded it as X, boosting extreme right voices (including his own), I still found myself glued to it, rationalizing my habit as “observing” the chaos.
Daily, I expanded my own echo chamber, assuring myself that the opposition was on the brink of collapse. But in reality, I was merely feeding my indignation.
On election night, I finally decided to quit Twitter (or X, although [like Stephen King](https://mashable.com/article/stephen-king-trolls-elon-musk-twitter-x), I still refer to it as Twitter). It felt like disconnecting from a TV series that had long overstayed its welcome. I could foresee the following episodes with eerie exactness: Twitter/X would transform into a dunking zone, rife with left-wing grievances and right-wing triumphalism. Keyboard warriors and bots would become emboldened, and their targets would require defense.
Mad as hell, we’d all project our anxieties onto the tiniest targets, eager to mock each other for the slightest slight. But no degree of doomscrolling could rescue us from that futile time-waster, that distraction from the genuine work of healing and moving ahead.
In the week since I quit cold turkey, I’ve missed Twitter less than I anticipated. Muscle memory led me to tap the X icon a few times, so I relocated it to the back of my news folder — no dramatic deletion required. Sure, I had a fleeting idea about a tweet I might have sent out post-election: *this is akin to the time traveler who altered the future by treading on a butterfly going back and squashing it again.* But is that genuinely the best use of my time now? Tossing quirky political jokes