Anyone else about ready to give up on the internet?
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.
299
Comments107
I'm ready to give up on most things.
Already have. Continued existence is mainly just for the benefit of the spouse who actually has things worse than I.
Inertia is really the only thing keeping me alive at this point...
Set up your own website if you haven't already, the indie web/smallnet/etc movement lately has been really cool to see and has made the internet fun again for me. Neocities is a great place to start if you need simple hosting, completely free and without ads
How are people finding these types or sites? I love the idea of it but I don't understand how any of it gets discovered.
Here's one place https://neocities.org/browse
this search engine finds smaller unique sites, lots of them happen to be neocities sites. Just refresh the page and see whats out there: https://old-search.marginalia.nu/search?query=browse%3Arandom
Neat, but this only makes me miss StumbleUpon. It was so freaking good for discovering niche websites. I have no idea why it shut down.
Oh StumbleUpon...thou shalt be remembered
I just tell people to go visit https://soulism.net/ as often as I get the chance
how did anyone find zombo.com back in the day
I think everyone's friend just told them about it one day.
Wasn't there just a thing with search engines de-indexing neocities and the like so no one could find them from search engines?
Search engines are the achilles heel of the internet. The enshitification bottleneck. We need ways to access information around these large for profit companies, as they no longer are doing an honest, honorable job, but maximizing profit in a plutocracy governed by dictators and corrupt soon to fall to fascism liberal democracies.
as far as i know, it was a bug with bing
My most recent lil obsession/project has been to see how doable getting the start of a community mesh network going would be. I want the internet to live up to its decentralised promise but that means actually decentralising it.
I've been seeing a lot about this stuff and I really want to get into it, seems really cool
It looks like meshtastic/meshcore is the easiest entry point depending on what has more nodes in your area, as far as I can tell it's just messaging but the barrier to entry is really low if you wanted to play around with it
I just got an OpenWrt One router to start setting it all up. I think once I get everything working well, I will try to find another nerd in town and get an antenna.
Great plan!!
I'm doing similar, I've got a router to start playing around with and I'm waiting to order another. Once I've got it working my immediate goal is free WiFi for the flats I live in with gateways through mine and my friends isp, using different lines for redundancy while figuring out how to get more people on board.
I'm in Wales but if you're nearby it would be cool to link up and discuss at somepoint
The easiest way to do this is to get a cheap or free VPS with wireguard and use that as a proxy for your self-hosted website/services.
The Internet sucks now. There's just not "things" on it anymore. When I was a teenager, there was always something new and interesting to do online. Modern Internet is social media, streaming, and shopping. It's just not the same.
Yep, it was a trove of discovery, now its all data gleaning and AI marketing slop, and other garbage.
The library of Alexandria, burns again.
I’m sure it still exists , it’s just not easy to find these websites. In those times you had search engines that worked, Even before google existed, and the other search engines weren’t as good , you could find authentic websites
I understand completely but am trying to mold my access to the world in a way that doesn't cause me such depression. I don't use the normal social networks, I've used the piefed filters to block everything about musk, trump, ice, america, politics, etc. and I've never followed any kind of "news".
Before I did that, I was literally becoming chronically suicidal(well, that's not gone but it's better) from the absolute shit-show that the world has become(it's not just the US, other countries are quickly adopting the bipartisan hatred model now that they see it works to divide). It would be different if you saw something regarding a change towards improvement but that's never seen, you just get another endless scroll of shit that is destroying society with no way to change it.
The fediverse is just as bad as any other social network out there. Although the leaning is opposite, it's still full of extremism, hyperbolic hatred, ridicule, mockery, division and sufferporn. Without filters, it would be as unusable to me as, say, facebook or trump's social network.
I'm withdrawing a lot from people online but still spend a lot of time online, it's just not as interactive as it used to be.
If this is not sustainable, I'm sure I'll likely follow your lead and leave it to the rest of the world.
Yes, that’s exactly how I feel. It’s almost as if it’s being deliberately rubbed in our faces about our true collective powerlessness in this moment.
Yes! I have so many filters enabled in my Lemmy client, but this morning, I stumbled upon a screenshot (since filters aren’t smart enough to extract content from screenshots) of an Epstein email that was so incredibly disturbing in its implication. These aren’t my vile thoughts, yet they’ve been bouncing around my mind all day.
I can’t take it anymore.
Please stay strong out there.
I've done this as best I can too. It was hard because I feel a need to be informed, but I came to the conclusion that being informed was actually only making me miserable, and didn't actually spur any kind of action. It was actually the opposite because the fear machine kept me paralyzed with despair and cynicism.
I cut out as much as I can, and while things are still tough, I have more mental capacity to focus on what's actually happening to me in the here and now.
You might know it already but I would recommend a free newsletter called Fix the News. It's a roundup of only positive news, and not fluff either. It's honestly done a lot to make me realize the endless bad news is a very narrow look at what's happening in the world.
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.
I keep a book on my person at all times now. Instead of mindlessly grabbing my phone (internet propaganda portal), I'll grab the book instead. Been doing it about six months now, I like it a lot. I still havnt finished a book, I jump from one to the other very often, but I'm reading much more.
Its okay to sign off. I had a panic attack two weeks ago, and basically had to sign off for a time. I'm still keeping distance from the internet though. Renewing my love of reading has been a serious positive though.
That's great! I've also been reading more than usual, finished 14 books so far this year. I read at the dog park, at the store, when my wife is driving etc, instead of checking my phone. My notifications are turned off except from my family. It's helped my mental health considerably.
14 is wow! Good for you, I love it :)
Man I feel you. There are so many things I want to read, so it’s hard to stay focused on one thing sometimes. I have like five or six books right now in various stages of completion next to my couch. I probably need to get some ADHD meds.
I have ADHD too. Why remembering to throw the book in my purse, and to just leave it there permanently, is the best strategy I've come up with so far. I mean, when I finish it, I'll swap it out, but I'm on my way to actually finish this book.
If I read at home I jump around from book to book, whatever looks interesting in the moment. Reading while out, I've only got the one choice, thw book I've carried with me.
We'll be real though, I'm about to head out for the day, an I want to swap it out for a new one lol
I love me a paperback book that can fit in a pocket
Don't give up, stick to places that don't suck. Corpotrash is replacable
Get off gen social. Contribute what you can and help to build niche communities that interest you.
I agree! If we give up and move somewhere else, they'd just follow us and ruin it.
Not if it's set up right. This federation is the model, it just needs to be tweaked. Clear rules on instances that can talk between the lemmy and piefeds to the open source facebook and twatter and instagram type social medias. One account that can travel between them.
More than that, to have a clear set of rules for moderation, both in the instances and the general forums, and for violations to be appealable, and a final decision contested to end in a jury trial of users. To prevent the powerful from getting their hooks in, and to prevent the moderators and administrators being unjust. It's the only way to get the critical mass we need to have a viable alternative to these silicon valley parasites that are in thrall to big business and government.
Also in addition we need new sort of organizations, ones where innumerable groups can cooperate on what they agree on on general forums, as they see fit. Privately and publicly, where we can pool knowledge, funding, create businesses where maximizing revenue isn't the only concern in sectors where the private market isn't providing needed outcomes, finding and grooming and electing political candidates, pooling votes and collectively using votes and other actions to force poliiticians to adopt our positions over those of monied interests.
Monied interests cooperate on what they agree on, and if we don't do the same we can never counter-act them. We are stronger than the united greed of those interests, that is hurting itself long term to maximize it's short term profit. We just need the forums to work together. Federated systems are that forum, to remove liability from he whole for one thing.
If what was meant when OP says 'internet' is the cesspool social media, then yes, we should totally ditch them.
However, the fact remains that the real definition of internet is simply a bunch of interconnected devices that run the internet protocol (IP), nothing more and nothing less.
Though I have my doubts, I'm not disagreeing with you or anything, just pointing out that there's a lot of people confusing this term, and simple as it may be, it might be harmful.
I think I was just trying to say that it's not doomed to enshitify if we set up new systems to work despite the malign forces at work. The idea behind open source and federation could work to set up systems that could be resistant to the enshittening.
We need a sort of federated social media as much as anything. While lemmy is a good start, we need to add more types of social medias that can interact together and improve their functioning, and also give a set of clear rules that can be appealed to a jury trial of users for serious infractions to get and keep the trust that would enable us to overcome the established silicon valley parasite companies that the government and big business has their hooks into and as such is a compromised forum we are doomed to lose the common good on.
Valid point.
What I would like to add to it is that we will need to defend it from time to time.
We've already seen an example when Meta's Thread tried to federate.
Spammers have also been a nuisance, and thankfully our mods & admins have been handling them well.
I've given up on the super-corporate side of the Internet.
99% of my Internet use is Mastodon and Lemmy, both of which don't really represent "the Internet". I sail the high seas occasionally to help meet my other needs.
Yes, multiplayer gaming is toxic as hell. If I'm doing that, I have chat turned off, but mostly I've managed to finagle the Internet into my own personal, cozy little Hobbiton derivative, so it doesn't feel quite so toxic to me as it might to the population at large.
Lemmy is a salvation spot for me, been an internet denizen since before I was a teen, it has been sad to see it slide into popularity contest/mass consumerism garbage. But I enjoy my Minecraft videos I've been watching for over a decade and getting to chat about homelab/Linux stuff as an alternative.
Its not like the real world (in the us at least) is doing any better lmao
Nah, it's just getting good. The Epstein/Mossad files are slowly melting the fascist tide by exposing the perverts behind the curtain. The billionaires are losing their control over information to first hand accounts posted live so we can all see the truth before the spin. The Internet is the forefront of understanding what is about to happen.
Don't quit now. If you want to see the truth, the Internet is the last place to host it unfiltered. Quitting is how the billionaires get people to only see the world through captured media.
Fucking optimist over there. There is nothing to celebrate, all epstein has showed us is nothing will force consequences for our connected rich in the west, our opposition to fascists is controlled to prevent us from seeing them face consequences, and that the worst people in the world hold an absolute veto over a critical mass of our lawmakers with that information.
If the fediverse were to collapse, I'd be done. Its the one thing worth being hopeful about right now.
Be mindful that it's a tool, use it to benefit youself
I jave been onlone from the dialup and BBS days of the 1980's when it was the reserve of nerds, it's accelerated the enshitifcation process in the last 20 years and commercialisation via advertising is why, it's the only reason Googke, Facebook etal exist
Yeah the internet is cooked.
Im trying to invest more time in off-line things.
like the n64
I'll tell you right now: many of those old corners of the internet... Are still there. A lot aren't, but a lot still are. Seek them out, it's worth it.
what do you mean? like, not urls to your vorners, but I'd like to hear your version of the old imternet you say is still there? you mean small blogs? custom made homelages?
Yeah. There are forums and webpages and ftp sites and bizzaro corners that make me laugh and realize that the old internet that we all miss... Is the authenticity of the human spirit, and not only is that alive and well with an appetite, but vintage and legacy sites are still around.
If you're missing that era, think back to what you were doing with the internet back then, and try to find places like that now.
One of the reasons now feels so wrong is because of the optics; the few big websites that are everywhere and have us addicted to their platforms and pacing are not authentic, and are focused on growth and now extracting value to please stakeholders, which results in a lot of censorship and normatization and sterilization. But once you search out your places and talk to the people there, I guarantee there's people with the same drives for not only escaping the traps, but also those common interests. Which is why I can only say that it's really worth it to search out the places you need to be.
Think back to how you found the places you used to love and gave you a sense of freedom and authenticity. Who made those places? What else were you doing in your life?
I literally just talked to a stranger on a platform earlier today about this that I ran into. They were still there, still doing the same thing that they were doing in the early 2000s. Obviously, they're 20 years older and live in reality. But, their and my common interest aligned and purpose came from it.
Another reason I think now feels so wrong is because of shame. There's a LOT of shame in current internet culture and real life. People calling things cringe, etc. This results in a huge lack of both originality in expression and thought. Imagine if you walked up to a busker and said something like "bro, you're fucking cringe and chopped". Like what an insanely toxic way to stomp out the fun and color of not only that person, but yourself and anybody witnessing that. Let people be fucking weird and embarrassing and gross and predictable and whatever. We're all human, everybody has their own experiences. Less shame, more weirdness.
Obviously, there are other huge, depressing forces at work. But regardless of those forces at play and if they end up completely ruining everything or not, this is our life, this is your life, this is your only shot at enjoying all the things being alive has to offer...
GO FIND YOUR PEOPLE! THEY ARE OUT THERE!
The Internet is a very, very large and deep and complex place, with all kinds of history and cultures and subcultures and movements and niches, out in the open, hidden, and not so hidden. It's not just for porn. It's not just for consuming. And if you don't like something about it, you can make something new :o
I2P still has the feel of the old internet.
There's still 4chan, but it's kind of shitty due to the captcha.
The Internet as a whole isn't the problem. Specific sites are. Steer clear from those sites, and you'll be just fine. Take notice of which sites and services result in negative emotions, and find alternatives to those places.
::: spoiler spoiler
All the popular sites will be on that list. Anything made by one of the big companies is permanently contaminated. If it involves Meta, Xitter, Reddit in any way, you're better off without it. Also, many popular news are built on the idea of spreading fear and anxiety. Avoid those sites too.
:::
If you feel you have to step away, then do it for yourself - keep being mindful of the cause. Because it's not a shut and close situation.
Life is always changing, tonight you might not want the internet - half a year from now you might need a very obscure information and you will be able to look it up and log off again.
I love the internet, because it is amazing tool. And so much knowledge is at the tip of your fingerprints! In my childhood if I wanted to learn something I hoped we had the right book home, or it's library time with the cards and looking for books and hoping the book had an appendices...
Internet does have a rotten part to it - but to give up all the free education YouTube has, all the wikis on the world - it would be going backwards for me.
Knowledge was at your fingertips. Now it's not quite that. I put a question into a search engine and don't get a good answer. Not from the search page, and the enshitified results are almost all written by machines, repeating the question over in every way it could be said, and explaining in exhuastive detail why someone would want to know the answer, all to hit the search engine requirements, then maybe a sentence or two with a lousy answer.
But you might not be able to find the answer on the page. I've to cycle through multiple pages and scan ai written prose to find an answer that I used to get instantly right from the search page.
I know it can work better, because it did work better. 2021 the enshitification became ubiquitous. That is hardly the only way information is no longer available. Dependent as we are on Search Engines for access to this information, and malign forces having their hooks into those For Profit search engines, we are entering a dark age.
Unless we get some players not in the Shit Trust, the anti competitive providers of any sector that have decided to all do a shit job to maximize profit rather than compete to offer the best products.
Or Trustshit, trustshittered search engines, I'm still workshopping the name.
You might be done with people, not the internet.
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.
Yup, I've gotten much more into the smolweb, niche websites and the dark web, where some parts still feel like a place I can breathe.
This is the way to do it
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.
I still doomscroll to stay a little informed but my recent salvation has been free ebooks on my phone. Same phone strolling action but instead of doom, I get fun little mysteries.
Just don't read news. News push negative narrative because it creates strong emotional reactions and people engaged. Problem is even here on Lemmy, people share and discuss these toxic news instead of writing their own view of it that is more modest and objective.
AI is the thing thats close to pushing me off. I've loved it less and less every day since it turned into a popularity contest, but it still had a lot of great stuff. Now its not even people pretending to be something they're not, its a computer program pretending to be somebody pretending to be somebody theyre not in the vain hopes that you'll LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE.
I'm not talented or special-skilled or super-interested enough in anything to warrant joining any niche forums. This right here is the last of my Internet I think. Once Lemmy is overrun by thots and bots I might be done.
I bet you have some cool talents even if they don't drive you to forums
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 almost feel the same, too much USA doomnews about Trump and Epstein. Here, people break rules too, just to spam USA news 24/7.
My solution to combat this, was to block keywords(Lemmy) and access website I only need(forums, websites etc).
Good luck! Come back and let the rest of us know what it's like out there.
I believe that life on the internet will reside in private, invite only communities. Public spaces will only get worse and worse.
I've had to put .htaccess passwords on a bunch of my pages just to try and keep the spambots and AI scrapers at bay. This world, man
*humanity
but yes, i'm vastly returning to an offline, analog life.
when i stay on, it's self-hosted and smolnet
you inspired me to check out ytmnd. fucking front page has an epstein contest.
i'm not entirely sure if i was on a tour of an active particle accelerator if i wouldn't take a dive just to try to get us all on a different universe. godsdamned weasels
It’s unavoidable, isn’t it?
I checked my RSS feeds once today and read that SpaceX is developing their own particle accelerator.
Man, I loved YTMND back in the day. I can't for the life of me remember how I first heard about it
the guy who introduced me to ytmnd tried and failed spectacularly to form an antigovernment militia (everyone he recruited was atf. he was such a doofus). my undergraduate experience introduced me to some interesting people who went on to commit the stupidest felonies.
Sounds like some wild folks.
After pondering it for about ten minutes I'm pretty sure I was introduced to YTMND by someone posting https://darthno.ytmnd.com/ in response to something in a forum I was on. I've had that URL memorized ever since and use it every now and then for similar dramatic responses of my own
i mean, every drama department is full of characters
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.
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.
that sounds more like problems with IRL than problems with the internet
not this part
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'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 them 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.
Still good to find "free" content 😏
Pretty much. Recently got a device for Meshtastic, need to get around to playing with it. If I recall, SearX is an open-source search engine yeah? We should mod it to explicitly block the corpoweb as a whole and strictly favor results from foss and federated sources.
Clearnet is completely controlled by corporate advertisers. You're looking for I2P.
Anything good on I2P? I haven't used since high school
Lol not really, but be the change you want to see in the world!
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.
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.
No. I might use it less often, but it's also a more healthy relationship instead of what tech bros wanted.
I thought about this multiple times, I've went digital minimalist and it partially is better, you just unlock so much space and mind relax once you are a few days without an internet connection. But I think that's not enough. And the internet today is shit, like every communication media, if it isn't permeated by enough novelty it starts being in control of the few and it starts entering game powers and becoming shit. Think of printed press, radio, TV: all great inventions but they all eventually just lost their original empowering and sharing purpose and became redundant stuff, getting worse and worse, more and more controlled, less and less free and reachable.
And this is happening to the internet as well, it's not a novelty, it's just that we've grown up with it, and as the tool is new its way of getting out of reach is new as well, and there aren't worthy alternatives yet, at least not so used that you can even build very effective communities / new medias of communication on. It's not even internet fault, it's human fault. We love power games and control so much that we end up using our tools to destroy ourselves instead of empowering ourselves, that's not a technological problem, that's a cultural one. We are stressed animals, we've been like that for centuries.
I am also very very very, and I mean very tired. Every business wants to enter social medias, and every person who joins social medias ends up becoming the same: they want more, more followers, more attention, more posts. People are starting to lose actual human contact and interactions, even sex is starting to be more about a screen than body on body.
We have AMAZING tools. Internet is amazing, AI is amazing. We could solve so much of the world's problems if we used them the right way, but we didn't. We like becoming stale, we like to avoid novelty, to avoid connection, we are sick and stressed. We simply focus on the wrong things. All the time.
I mean think how software just progresses better if it's open source, think about Linux, it's just an open, novelty seeking OS. Even Linux Torvalds said that every kind of locking development with licenses, every kind, even GNU licenses that made illegal to close source the code, was detrimental to the development, he was an advisor of completely open licenses as MIT. And that's because he loved what he was doing, and loved that the code was completely accessible and most companies originally were selling support, not their code.
Proprietary platforms mask the same ways to profit on you as novelty accessibility. They lock down their code and they make it stale, the problem is not even they wanna profit from it, it's they wanna subtly profit on you without you being completely aware on what they are doing (whether we can still debate if money is a good way to exchange value between people). It's they wanna play tricks on you. It's okay if you sell a platform to someone for a service in exchange, it's not okay to strongly push people on it, locking their machines down, closing down hardware and software on a single platform, influencing the politics, people's view of reality, actively destroying alternatives, for selling your product.
They all knew what they were doing, but they saw the profits and started to ignore everything else.
Power makes people sick, power is our problem, the concept of power is something typical of a carnivorous animal when it predates other animals, or in hierarchical structures all deriving from the stress of the animal about not being able to satisfy its needs. And being so aggressive towards our own species to the point of creating institutions made specifically for that purpose is something that can arise just from a highly stressed species. We ignored the existing networks in nature and ignored that real harmony can be found in relationships that are more similar to symbiosis, not to predation. We are definitely capable of satisfying our basic needs as a collective species thanks to all our technologies, but we did never seek for balance, we seek for power. Instead of accepting death and pain we started to reject them, and in that process we created way worse pain and more death, and we became blind to beauty. Sometimes somehow we seem to realize it and create better situations, but history teaches that we always come back, it's a cycle.
I don't even think this can be solved by human beings unless we somehow change our brains, the alternative is some sort of external entity interacting with us, something that can be incredibly fast and distributed. Otherwise, with the help of our beloved technology, we've happily became so powerful that we can destroy ourselves.
Fuck no I'm not, I'm just continuing to use it in ways I want rather than that make money for billionaires.
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
Good luck with that
Every other post on this platform is political.
I really couldn't care less about politics right now...
Please tell me if there is a way to turn off political stuff...
Unfortuntely, nothing fine-grained enough for me. But, you can block communities and users (or even whole instances).
I prefer the keyword filters on Mastodon, but I don't mind the political stuff, so my needs are clearly different from yours.