A Cyber-Psychological Reflection on Letting Go in the Age of Algorithms
You don’t really get to forget in the digital era.
Not entirely.
Letting go of the past used to be a rather spiritual concept. You’d stash away a photo album, toss out a letter, maybe even burn a keepsake—and that was that. The memories drifted away like an old house fading in your rearview mirror. But these days? Now your phone buzzes with reminders—“Remember this day?”—and suddenly, the past barges in, as if it’s right there in front of you.
Google Photos, OneDrive, Facebook Memories—these services are essentially algorithmic necromancers, conjuring ghosts we never asked to see. A picture of someone you lost. A night when you still believed in forever. A child when they still fit in your arms. A version of yourself who smiled with less weight behind their eyes.
And you sit there, blinking at that damn glowing screen, torn between two lives—
The one that was
…and the one that is.
Cyberpsychology has a term for this phenomenon:
Digital Liminality
It’s that psychological state we enter when we’re trapped between timelines, suspended in the emotional vertigo of past and present. The interface becomes an altar of nostalgia—worshipping what’s been lost, never recovered, sometimes regretted.
It’s important to acknowledge this: you can’t live in the past. However, what lies ahead holds endless possibilities. You can’t revert back to who you once were, but you can look forward to becoming someone even more remarkable.
The version of reality you once longed for?
It won’t ever exist again; letting go of grasping onto a force fucked attempt at recreating a world of yours as it was before isn’t possible. The hardest part of letting go is realizing that you’re holding on in the first place. The reward is a commitment towards growth.
Savor the now because it will become the past.
Memories will wither away, yet the emotions they evoke will ignite when the notification reminding you of “this day 20 years ago” appears on your device. There will be a time when scrolling those Terabytes of images taken throughout your life will become the favorite stories shared to those with eager ears.
Plus, being old as fuck probably sucks, and the best way to feel happy is to see a 2-hour slideshow of you young and happy.
But if there’s no effort made to let go of the frantic wish to keep things the same, as they inevitably become worse and fall apart, then that slideshow becomes incredibly short. Smile more now so that you will always be able to when the whole life ahead of you becomes “the little time you have left.”
