“Maybe she’s introverted,” I told Daughter. We were talking about a teammate of hers.

“She’s pretty vocal in the dressing room, though,” she said.

“When I was in high school, I had days when I didn’t speak to anyone. Not a word.”

“I could never do that,” said Daughter, showing great insight. She’s quite the chatterbox.

“Well, I may be lazy and all, but when it comes down to just making your mind up about something, I can be pretty stubborn. If I had decided that it was going to be a silent day, that’s what it was going to be.”

I realize that I don’t have a lot of power in this world over almost anything, so I do seize the opportunity to use whatever little power I do have whenever I can. That’s what I like to call “a small man’s silent protest”. In other words, a boycott.

Not to brag but I am really good at boycotts. A few years ago, I took a longer route to the grocery store – for a year – because I didn’t approve the way the construction work was marked on our regular route. In college, I boycotted my closest grocery store, just across the street because I once saw the owner grab a paper bag and slip a (delicious) Finnish minced meat pie in it. Her crime? She did it before I had told her what I was going to buy. It was such an overreach, I thought, that it merited a boycott, no matter how great their pies were.

This behavior is something that in our household is called a “Risto revenge” in which Risto is the only real loser.

This has been on my mind recently thanks to the techbro oligarchs, the puppet masters behind social media apps. The rage it stirs up in me makes me want to quit social media altogether.

I deleted my Twitter accounts – note the plural – a year ago to join Threads which I have since then left to join Bluesky. I still have my Facebook account, but I don’t feel like posting there anymore and am seriously considering deleting the account. I’m not on TikTok.

The Risto revenge has not been activated yet, but I can feel it coming. I’ll just have to call and text my friends more. And of course, I’ll have to come up with other methods of procrastination, but I think I can do it.

I’ve done it once. In my imagination. Here’s Peter, the protagonist of my debut novel, Someday Jennifer, speaking with his sister, Tina:

“I haven’t disappeared. I’ve travelled through time.”
“What? How does that even work?”
“Well, it’s already going fairly well, thanks for asking. Not using my phone was the hardest thing. It’s fascinating, the reflex to ‘post’ everything and then see how many people ‘like’ it. Bizarre. I still reach for the phone whenever I see something interesting, but now, if I feel like checking Facebook, I do ten push-ups. My arms are a little sore.”
Silence at the other end.
“Anyway, I left my phone in my garage in Helsinki, along with my futuristic car. I don’t watch the news, I’m off social media, I play my old games, and I read old papers at the library—that’s how it works,” I went on.
“Basically, you’re just going to live in the past? Please,” Tina said.
“Hey, the Amish do it! And they’re happy.”

That’s what it’s all about, right? The pursuit of happiness.

Originally published in my newsletter in February 2025