The last time I had a blog was… 17 years ago (damn). It was a Wordpress blog where I wrote absolutely inane things that I wanted to share with friends. Facebook didn’t really take hold back then, and blogging was still king of long formats.

For the longest time, blogging - for me - was relegated to the dead and buried technologies pile. There’s all manner of social media platform nowadays, so many ways to keep in touch with people and spout nonsense to the world.

Who even uses blogs anymore?

As far as I knew, not many people. All of my old blogosphere contacts had not written anything in nearly two decades. Friends who would religiously blog every day were now nowhere to be found. Back in my day, there were a boatload of us, each of our blogs tackling different topics, having a specific tones and voices. It was a little corner of internet where you laid your soul bare. Well, maybe not that dramatic, but it was a nifty little way to not only get things off your chest, but also share some of your opinions with a bunch of like-minded people.

Remember, at this point the ’net was still generally a slow place. Things didn’t update on the dime, platforms weren’t constantly fighting for your attention, creating content was hard work (relatively speaking, of course) and people weren’t communicating through snarky, smart-ass sound-bites.

Right here, right now

I won’t bore you with the history of blogs and social media, we all know this stuff. Personally, I’ve used my fair share of social media platforms and apps, from Facebook and Twitter to Instagram, TikTok, you name it.

Long story short, not only were these apps specifically designed to keep as many eyeballs on it for as long as possible, they actively harmed communities and people through the algorithm.

I’ve always stated that the algorithm isn’t inherently good or evil, it just does its job really fucking well. It pushes controversial content that gets people riled up. Riled up people drive up engagement. Engagement makes money. It’s simple. The evilness comes from corpos which implement the algorithms. They can implement safeguards, but safeguards don’t make as much money.

That’s where my story with the social aspect of the ’net ends.

Right now, I’ve moved on to less shitty toxic alternatives, such as Lemmy, Mastodon or Matrix. Pixelfed should have some stuff, just as soon as I can be bothered to actually take some pics.

Moreover, I’ve turned away from the big boys with a swathe of changes:

• GMail, Google Photos, Google Drive were replaced with self-hosted alternatives
• Android was de-googled as much as possible (I admit it’s probably not enough, but I still have some things in mind as far as mobile goes), with FOSS alternatives to apps
• Spotify was cancelled in favor of a recurring donation to SomaFM, which is a terrific Internet radio service which has a bunch of stations for a bunch of different genres. A real breath of fresh air.
• YouTube was replaced with Piped, at least for the frontend. Unfortunately, PeerTube and other alternatives have serious discoverability issues, and most creators aren’t willing to invest time in them.
• Netflix, Disney+, HBO, Prime - all cancelled. Absolute garbage apps, content and terms. Right now, Plex with RealDebird is the shit.

More importantly, I’ve made some lifestyle changes regarding technology which I feel have had a really positive impact:

• No reading news in the morning. Most news are absolute dogshit, clickbait, fight-or-flight inducing nonsense. If I do read news, it won’t be when I’m about to start my day, no thank you.
• Less content consumption on the phone, less knee-jerk reaction to know shit. I don’t have to know immediately which actor plays that kid in that Rube Goldberg episode of The X-Files (spoiler: it’s Shia La Beouf)
• More reading. Like, actual books. I haven’t read a book in several years, it’s a wonder I have enough attention span for them. But, in the last 6 months I’ve gone through several books and I have rediscovered the joy of using my imagination.
• On a related note, I’m allowing myself to daydream. Not distracting myself every single second with apps and content, I can let my mind just wander, not necessarily thinking of something in particular, but just letting it do its thing, y’know?

Along with all these changes, I felt like going back to the blog format. Just laying out my thoughts on a page, taking about random, inconsequential shit. Not because anyone’s reading, but because it’s kinda therapeutical.

It also really helps with expressing yourself more clearly, not only through emojis or GIFs, but words as well - like grandpa did, before his mind went.

Okay, but what’s the point?

Right, right, this is getting long. The point I think I’m trying to make is that sometimes the old ways are crap. Sometimes, “back in my day” is boomer talk for “I really miss being young and enjoying things, so everything back then was better”.

But sometimes, just sometimes, we really gotta think what we lost along the way in pursuit of faster and faster and more content consumption. Just take a chill pill, broski. Read a blog or something, I dunno.