Online, offline

I’ve been been on the internet in one form or another for some twenty-five years and recently been thinking about the way it’s changed and what we’ve gained and lost along the way. I’ve spent a lot of the last fifteen years struggling with anxiety and found that it reliably improved when I step back from social media “discourse” (pointless arguments, harassment campaigns, and flame wars) and the type of outrage-bait that gets promoted because anger is a cheap and reliable to get interaction.

I can’t tell if it’s nostalgia or old age, but I want to slow down. I want to connect with people, not algorithms. I want an internet of information and artwork, not AI slop and lies, and websites that will last, and I want not to be dependent on companies and services that exist only to mine me for saleable data.

Some time ago, I made the decision to reject and reduce social media fort own mental health. I’ve logged out of and/or deleted the worst offenders: Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit. I keep Facebook only for people I already know and have left the groups and pages component. Tumblr is my one remaining “stream” I may yet come back to Reddit, having aggressively pruned my subs (I wanted to link a relevant subreddit - r/BetterOffline - skimmed the first few posts and immediately regretted it. It’s like a one-click “feel bad” machine, and Better Offline was one of the ones I was going to keep!).

Leechblock is useful – setting a hard block on pages that suck me in – and the minimal YouTube homepage and YouTube enhancer plugins are great for cutting out the algorithmically suggested videos. I see my subscriptions only or things I’m actively searching for.

It seems that there’ a collective realisation that our digital lives are hurting us. There’s a Gen-Z movement to ditch phones altogether and reconnect in person, while silver fox, on YouTube put out this essay on the value of being analog.

The Bullet Journal channel suggested some ways to simplify your phone - dramatically cutting down on how appealing it is to use:

• Make it Boring
• Make it Actionable
• Make it Contextual

I’d already done some of the first one, swapping out the stock Android launcher for a text-based one and, happily, one that allowed me to rename apps. I’m currently writing in Write (Obsidian) and I’ll swap to Waste Time (Firefox) to copy the links into the post later.

Struthless has taken a different approach with the brainrot apocalypse (a DIY survival guide). It’s closer to what I want than silver fox’s proposal – a mindful and meaningful digital life that compliments my analogue one and supports my creativity.

Struthless introduced me to the concept of “digital gardening”, which I’m very excited about. The learning in public is part of what I was doing with my website already, and the idea of a digital commonplace book where I could revisit and iterate over an idea is much more appealing (and less intimidating) than a chronological list of finished and polished assertions.

The digital garden concept is linked to the IndieWeb – another community of people with actionable advice on how to escape the walled gardens of social media and build something better.

I’m taking baby steps and dusting off my website so I can post here first and elsewhere later, if at all (an indieweb principle known as POSSE - Post to Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere).

Let’s try creating for a while, rather than reacting, and see if things improve.