The internet has always been my salvation.
As a socially underdeveloped kid, I’d spend my lunch hours in the high school library on those public desktop computers, reading fandom sites about my favorite video games. Computers always made sense to me. I even owe my entire career to them.
But the internet today feels wrong. Whatever the fuck kind of psychological warfare is happening right now with this Epstein stuff is too much for my mind to handle. I can’t do it anymore.
I will love. I will vote. I will support my community and continue to oppose this fucking nightmarish system we all find ourselves in. But I need to sign off.
Imagine the door closing sound effect when logging out of AIM.
I was told that I was as evil as the BTK killer a couple days ago. That was because I think circumcision is bad and female genital mutilation is worse. A couple weeks prior I was called a few dozen different awful things in a many many page dissertation about how evil I am. That one, because I made a one sentence joke about Hasan then trolled a 5 page response to it. So, idk maybe enough internet.
Fuck no I’m not, I’m just continuing to use it in ways I want rather than that make money for billionaires.
I’m not going to completely give up on it, but I’m finding ways to be more selective about how I use it. I’m moving away from it gradually, as going cold turkey has never worked for me in the past. I’ve started buying physical books when I can, working on hobby stuff more, going outside to exercise, etc.
Corporate social media is outright abusing people’s minds for profit and is wholly unethical. It should be burnt to the ground and only mentioned as a cautionary tale. Anything with an algorithm should be treated with the same kind of caution we use for hard drugs. Honestly, I’m not sure any form of social media is good for your mental health anymore, but at least federated socials are organic and free range, so to speak.
Streaming and gaming I’m more conflicted about. I feel it’s obvious that the current business models most streaming and gaming companies use have contributed to a decline in quality and artistry in our media. Microtransactions in games should be held in the same low regard as corporate social media. However, I don’t think giving people access to a broader selection of content is harmful in general, it’s just the constant price hikes, seemingly arbitrary cancellations and removals, and shifting of content from one service to another that ruins it. With product placement becoming an accepted practice, we’re seeing more and more movies and TV becoming ad vehicles and propaganda platforms… But we could have a nice thing if creators were respected and consumers treated fairly by the major streaming services. Sadly, that’s not likely to happen unless the money dries up.
News… News is awful. Regan dealt broadcast news a fatal wound by repealing the fairness doctrine, but it was Facebook that finally buried it. When more people started to access news content through Facebook and Twitter than from actually watching the channel, news networks adapted by creating content that plays well in the attention economy, which basically means they generate as much rage-bait as possible. If it’s not outright propaganda or apology peices then it’s just political gossip aimed and pissing one demographic or another off. There’s not much point in consuming any news except long format articles from a few select sources any more.
Interacting with people… Back in the heyday of forums you could find a wealth of info and helpful people to answer questions on almost any topic. But most of those forums had a miscellaneous or off topic board where the chronically online could talk about what ever they wanted. Those places were always a minefield of trolling, misinfo, and general assholery. That’s basically what smartphones turned the Internet into, one giant off-topic section full of angry, chronically online people. I don’t try to find online friends anymore…
For me, I limit devices to specific purposes. My phone does calls, messaging, and the few socials I interact with plus occasional music for workouts. My tablet only plays music, has a limited selection of games, and my e-reader apps (no socials, no streaming, etc.). TV is only for streaming video. My laptop I’ll occasionally access Lemmy on, look up hobby stuff, and do online shopping with. Any gaming is on a steam deck these days, and usually single-player offline titles. Setting things up this way helps me avoid doom scrolling, buying shit I don’t need, consuming mindless Netflix content, and buying in to AAA game hype. It’s not perfect, but somehow it helps a little.
Your mileage may vary.
Thank you for such a thoughtful response. You and I are pretty much on the same page on everything. I’m relieved to see that I’m not the only one who feels this way.
No problem. I get really down about what the internet has become because I remember what it was supposed to be back in the early days. We were gonna communicate without social barriers, end prejudice, save the rainforests and the whales, you know…?
But the very nature of the medium is impermanent. Every protocol and technology that underpins the internet is flexible, changeable. It’s changed significantly from the early days, back when people were optimistic and hopeful about what it meant for us, it can change again. But it won’t until we disengage from it. As long as we’re hooked, we feed the beast.
I think it’s good to talk about our dissatisfaction with what online spaces have become, to encourage people to pull back, consider what they’re doing, and to look for alternatives. We can’t pretend that it isn’t a part of our reality, it’s out of the bottle, the box is open and so forth, but it doesn’t have to touch the whole of our existence, it doesn’t have to shape every part of our reality.
I tell people to take a single small step. Leave your phone at home so you’re not tempted to cheat, then go to a book store and buy a book, pay cash for it, and don’t use a rewards program. Don’t ask for suggestions or look up reviews, browse the aisles and pick one based off the blurb on the back cover. Unless the cashier is a friend of yours, no one knows you own that book except you. No one was paying that much attention, I promise.
Owning that book will be something private, something only you really know about, so it can be any book you want. It’s a small act, but it’s one that’s utterly free of judgement, analysis, and intrusion, which makes it something profound in this day and age.
EDIT: Bonus points if it’s a local bookshop, but do the best you can.
You sound like a really wise dude. When you put it that way, it’s sooo true, I can’t believe that the simple act of buying a random book in cash is the antithesis of how consumerism works these days (we go online, read reviews, get tracked, get recommended books based on our search query and our “profile”, etc)
Also, may I ask what kind of games you’re into? That was a huge dilemma for me in the past. Like, should I run Linux or Windows. In the end, I gave up PC gaming after a lifetime of being a hardcore PC gamer and moved to console for simplicity sake.
Thanks. I don’t know if I’m wise, but I’m definitely old enough to have a little experience and cranky enough to resent someone being in my business all the time. Social media pushes us to share everything with everyone, so it can be fed into surveillance advertising, but there’s some peace of mind in having time and things that are only, or at least mostly, yours.
As far as gaming goes, I was a PC gamer for a long time as well. I used to play mostly RTS titles, but got into online games and MMOs in the vanilla WoW era. I’m not beholden to a particular type of game, and these days I play most exploration and story driven games with less of a combat focus where I can relax and complete at my own pace like Stray, Firewatch, Jusant, and Death Stranding. I replay old favorites a lot. Portal and Portal 2 still hold up really well.
Outside of issues with AI, a decline in quality, and privacy, the Windows vs. Linux choice really comes down to looking at the software you use and the games you play. In a lot of cases, there will be something that’s equivalent to common windows software, but works a little differently, Libre Office instead of MS Office, etc. So you have to consider your desire to relearn some common tasks as well. If you do try it, I’d get a second hard drive if you can, install Linux on it and dual boot or just keep the Windows drive around in case you decide you want to switch back.
I like Linux, I started using it after taking a class on it back in the early Win 10 days. I don’t do anything extreme or crazy with my set up, I mostly run Debian or Ubuntu based distributions like Mint, PopOS, MX, and so forth. I haven’t tried Bazzite yet, but I’ve heard good things. But if you want to tinker, go nuts, you can customize about anything if you have the skills. It’s never been 100% trouble free for me, but neither was Windows, and for the most part it’s run really well on my older hardware.
Linux gaming is a lot easier these days, and for the most part if you’re avoiding big AAA online only titles, you can run just about anything you want with minimal hassle. I bought the Steam Deck for simplicity’s sake, I was running most of my games through Steam with Proton on my desktop anyway, and it was cheaper than upgrading or replacing my old PC. Valve isn’t a perfect company, but they seem to be much better than most of the competition these days, and I like that they’re working to provide a solid alternative to Windows in a market that’s been dominated by one company for far too long.
I mean I gave up on web 3.0, bloated to hell web pages and telemetry shit. Stick on the small web and fediverse much as you can. Its still fun but it’s like music, you have to look hard to find good things now because its not right out there in front of you because there’s too much of it.
Instead of giving up, keep learning so you can explain and help the non tech illiterate how to run their own servers and docker containers etc etc for when every application requires a brain chip supplied by musky to log in. A lot of the normies are lost right now at how all this works and no one is explaining it to them. Now, 98% won’t listen to you, but you can try
Great comparison to music.
I viciously “edit” the internet as much as I can. I block toxic social networks and have deleted any accounts I had on them. There’s a Firefox plugin that lets you individually block sites in search results so you reduce scraper garbage SEO sites in your results. PiHole, uBlock, and whatever else that is available to block ads, tracking, etc. “-ai” when searching. Use SearXNG or non-big data search tools when able.
News comes from places like AP or Reuters. Not perfect, but better than half-true at best MSM clickbait.
It sucks. It takes work to enjoy what used to be better a decade ago, but let’s face it it’s been steadily downhill since ‘10 or so. I truly miss the “old” web. Yeah, it had its own problems, but it was far, far better and more egalitarian than this war zone of monetization and manipulation we have today.
In my free time on the weekends I disconnect and go outside and do stuff like hiking, climbing, airsofting, archery; then I come back to reality and it sucks
I’d say you’re coming back “from” reality. More like back “to” Plato’s Cave, which is what I consider screens to be.
No, not “off” the internet.
Off the big corporate-driven soulless sites, maybe. Smaller discussion groups/forums, dedicated services, etc. still works. It’s less tedious, less eating your brain.
Basically, going back to internet before central planetary services that feed on everyone being miserable.
Kind of reminds me of how Pride just became another advertising platform for businesses.
Money really does ruin everything.
Yes, exactly what I said!
Use a custom DNS, don’t use yhr big 3 corpo sites, youll have a great time.
The other thing, get more tech literate friends. My dumb friends are annoying the hell out of me with how ignorant and unwilling to learn they are.
Good luck with that
It’s hard to get a recipe off the internet without having to hunt for it after a 14 mile long backstory no one on earth cares about. To me, that sums up the internet. It’s damn near dead.
My internet experience is heavily filtered. I don’t see ads, I mostly focus on local news and events, and have certain keywords filtered here. It’s been so nice. It’s much less stressful dealing with my local and state community than everything else.
I always viewed the Internet as a kind of alternate reality growing up. But, then that started to change once “social networks” started taking off and all the normies (as some people refer to it now) started using it. Then it kind of started becoming almost “realer” than IRL, with algos optimized to manipulate people, and sophisticated propaganda campaigns. About 5 years ago, I noticed politicians started using language taken from the “gamergate” discourse. Now, the US admin is transparently trying to control discourse on the largest platforms, and official government institutions are poorly shit-posting.
So, yeah, it’s kinda disheartening how one of the greatest communication tools has turned into a tool for control. Though, in hindsight, I guess I should’ve seen this coming, even from fiction created a century ago. I think I remember some person saying that the Nazi regime wouldn’t have been possible without the invention of the radio.
It’s pretty interesting to see how normie culture destroys everything it infests.
The same game has been playing out between the puppets and their puppeteers long before the internet came to being.
Internet is a great to access information and people but most of the internet is garbage we need to promote quality sources and ethical technology practices
Nope. Just about all the good things in my life, arrive through the intertubes. My anime, games, hentai, history videos, they are only really practical because of the internet.
The only pleasure I have outside the internet is food. And honestly, eating for pleasure is far more expensive than a good game. For $30, I can have at least a month of amusement. A good meal? Just a day of contentment.
Maybe I would feel differently if I could spend money without feeling anxiety…but meatbag activities like visiting third places, fills me with fiscal dread. I cannot leave my room often, else I risk poverty finally overtaking me.
I worry more what the internet is doing to children than to our rotten heads. Both are harmful but I have kids, and well once you give them a smartphone then who knows. Will some big corp ask them for face id and personal data? Fuck that but apparently it’s unavoidable
Not at all. Look at this beautiful corner we have made here.
Same mainstream right-wing BS.
Only americans might think differently since it has little Trumper presence.
