I spend a lot of time on the Internet. Probably too much, according to some people. I am rapidly approaching 35 years old and I had access to both computers and the Internet at an early age and I’ve always been a massive nerd, so I practically grew up alongside the modern web, for better or worse. But these days it’s no secret (if you’re paying even the slightest bit of attention) that large parts of the web have turned into a massive, steaming pile of shit. To put it mildly.
Streaming services are continually getting worse (there are a few I would cancel immediately if it wasn’t for the fact that it would cause serious consternation from certain members of the family), and “AI” is consuming not only the hard work of everyone who puts their work online for others to enjoy but also a solid amount of the worlds water supply and energy bringing us ever closer to the destruction of our eco-system. Good times!
So, with all that said, I’m probably enjoying my time online more now than I have in a long time. And that’s really just because of a few simple changes I’ve made over the last few years, and they haven’t even been entirely deliberate. The places I used to spend so much of my time have all gone to shit in their quest for infinite revenue growth and the pleasing of shareholders, so I ran for the hills.
And up in the hills, I rediscovered blogs, because those are totally still a thing, and they’re great! There are mountains of awesome blogs out there these days. The list of subscriptions in my RSS reader is getting longer all the time, and I love reading all of them. The hours of my life that used to be dominated by Reddit are now entirely replaced by blogs, and I find so much more joy in that.
Speaking of which, if you have any suggestions for blogs I should read (maybe yours?), please e-mail them to me! I’ll read basically anything and everything 1.
I ran away from Twitter as fast as possible when you-know-who took over, and now I instead spend quite a bit of time on Mastodon. And while Mastodon has some issues, it is a pretty chill place to hang out. I’ve met some awesome people there so far, much more than I’ve ever done on any of the other similar platforms.
I still spend some time on a few of the larger platforms. Instagram is probably the big one for me. While I despise so much of what Meta is doing with the platform (and the Internet in general), I love looking at the artwork made by the people I follow there. I do my very best to avoid doom-scrolling and stick to looking at stuff from people I care about, but you know, nobody’s perfect.
Basically, my Internet time consists of looking at cool art and reading blogs from awesome people. Of course, it’s important not to get stuck in a bubble. So I’ll stick my head out every once in a while to get a feel for how things are looking in the AI-infested wasteland that is now a large part of the web, but I never spend a lot of time out there. This little island I’ve made for myself is a much, much nicer place.
- Seriously. ↩︎