Blog post title
Hey, I'm Theo. Theo abtmtr.link. You might know me as the tech kid in real life. Or something. Who knows?
I've recently gotten rid of (most of) my primary means of instant communication. Fedi, Twitter, Matrix... such things like that. Other platforms I might still have a presence on have gone unmonitored and may not represent current events. The only platforms I'm really active on is Discord, Signal, and my site's e-mail. Yes, I check my e-mail. Please send me e-mails, I'd prefer it.
Anyway, this blog post isn't about email. It's not even about instant messaging platforms, or social media. It's about technology, moderation, and how allowing yourself to get sucked into your own digital vices can distract you from the world around you.
Now, you might be saying, “but Theo, the digital world is the only world I can truly live happily in! The concept of death scares me and existing as a living being is one of my biggest regrets in this universe. I wish to live as one of them exopaths from those new-fangled Translunar Academy webseries and exist purely over TCP/IP.”
I get that. Don't worry, I get that a lot. The real world is scary, especially growing up. I'm going through that right now and it's a whole bit. I don't know how I'm going to get through it, but I hope I make it!
OK, so. How did I do this? How did I go from being a simultaneous Twitter, Reddit, Discord, and Tumblr user to some kind of freak who communicates only using e-mail, Discord, and Signal? Am I becoming one of those free software weirdos? Am I going to start PGP-encrypting the mail I send soon ???
...No. None of that will happen to me (I hope). I still use Gmail. I recently switched back to Windows on my main desktop. I main a stock Samsung tablet for on-the-go usage, and I'm still mostly relying on proprietary services to get my work done and my music playing. It's all about moderation.
I used to be a little weird. I don't know if I can really say I changed much, but I was really all over the place. I bounced between Discord and Twitter almost frequently, and I swiped the top of Reddit's refresh bar more times than I can count by 10 on my hands. Being on Fedi didn't help much either, because it was like being on Twitter except the drama is about server moderation instead of/alongside pedophilia.
Fedi was a strange experience. It was nicer-feeling than Twitter, sure – everyone on my timeline was someone I knew, and it felt better running my own server than posting wildly on someone else's. But now, I just can't tell the difference. There's “no algorithm” – sure, there's more privacy, no ads, smaller communities... so much differences! But at the end of the day, so many people are still describing Fedi as “It's like Twitter, but...”
To me, Fedi is like the gated neighbourhood version of Twitter. Ironic, I know – isn't the Fediverse supposed to democratize social media? Allow anyone to run their own server and speak their own mind, even if their brain runs at half a bit per second and they spew conspiracy theories about Jewish people on their Hetzner Rebased-Pleroma server?
Well, in theory, yes. In practice, no (except for the conspiracy theory guys, they always seem to find a way).
You see, a Fedi server is expensive to operate. Sure, you could use /mas(?:to)?(?:don)?\.(?:social|online|art|to)/ – but those are large Mastodon servers, which is like using Twitter except Elon is German and a little less of a shithead. You'd rather host your own (or get someone else to host one for you), which is why Fedi is full of lesbian catgirls and gay protogens[1]. They own servers and domains already, so it... makes sense for them to also own a lot of the independent Fedi instances.
⌘ THE BELLIGERENT DOT SPACE
Oh, god, not this again. Another The Bad Space retro(?)spective? In my technology blog post? And it has its own header??? Fuck, dude.
Don't worry, this isn't really about The Bad Space. Though it does start with The Bad Space is a service created by BIPoC users of the Fediverse to automatically generate Mastodon CSV blocklists based on consensus from a council of instances. It was designed to block racism, hate, and other “Edgelord, Eris Disqordia apologist” deviancy from the view of its users. Which, arguably, on paper, is fine. I'd like that. I'd appreciate that, even. I hate to see a lot of things, racism included. In practice (yes, I'm doing this bit again): not so great. It was a controversypilled epicfailcel.
The problem is that there is a lot of whimsy and nuance on Fedi. Semantics, even. Semantics that not even the chattiest of GPTs could process, let alone an application written in PHP, even under the whims of actual instance moderators.
And then, when you mix it with a platform where the majority of users are actually another minority in real life, you get controversy. You get name-calling (transphobic, racist, nazi, right-wing, pedophiles, etc...) and you get RIDICULOUS FOLLY.
INEXCUSABLE.
Anyway, this blog post isn't about The Bad Space being poorly executed, or The Bad Space being sabotaged, or about how Black people are secretly the devil, or how trans people are also secretly the devil. It can't really be about that, since that would be unnecessarily cruel.
This blog post is about freedom. It's about using your time wisely. Ditching social media and getting out of massive, time-wasting conversations like “Black people vs. trans people who will win?” will absolutely get you a lot of time back in your life. It'll make you notice a lot more things, and maybe do a lot of other stuff – outside, even ??
Are you hooked yet? Are you thinking about leaving those social media platforms you're on and never looking back?
WHAT DO YOU MEAN NO ???
Errible-twitter Ime-twitter t-awitter Edi-fwitter
OK, it's pretty obvious why not. You've got friends. Fandoms, even. Communities.
I'll be honest, one of the only reasons this has worked this well for me is because I wasn't committed to much at the time I decided to quit. I wasn't following any fandom hashtags, I was grateful everyone I knew had a website (and those who didn't, I found again eventually), and that I stopped really doing much on the social media I was mainly on anyway. It was Fedi, by the way.
There is another reason too – Fedi was getting kinda boring. I wasn't as interested in it as I used to be. I was aware that it was kind of a circlejerk of experimentation that people just so happened to talk on. Elitism (Shartkey vs. Asskoma vs. Mastodumb) frequently caused me to fuck with my Fedi server setup (I experienced no actual problems doing Fedi server management on everything but Sharkey), and drama (“fedi meta”) caused me to shut out everything that wasn't the meowing, barking, and Linux posts I was quickly growing tired of. For me, it sucked. At least Twitter users could agree on what backend to use.
Maybe that's just grim-tinted glasses. Who knows. This blog post isn't about bringing down current users of Fedi either, by the way. If you're enjoying it, great! Just please, for the love of all that you may find divine, shut the fuck up about instance backends /hj.
Fedi also changed me a little. You know those NIMBYs that scream at you if you kiss a cute boy in the front yard of your HOA-operated property? That was me, with Mastodon users and politics. I did not like them, and while American politics is fucking stupid, there is no way I seriously expected backhanded expressions towards Mastodon users would change anything.
Those are the reasons I made this change.
DOOON'T DOOO THIS!
By the way, I should probably tell you that you shouldn't do this. Shocked? I am too. I thought doing this would be freeing, and it... is, but having freedom right after you just spent 50% or more of your time doing fuck all kinda.... makes you keep doing fuck all. Just in a different, more freer way.
Replacing any of your means to an end (end of a project, work, the day, your life) with a “freer” (as in freedom) alternative doesn't solve any problems related to doing things within those means.
If you replace 30 minutes of Twitter with 30 minutes of lying down and staring directly into the sun, that's still bad for you. It just means you're (probably) not getting tracked by algorithms and shown gore while that happens.
More realistically, it's still kinda bad for you even if you aren't staring directly into the sun. Just lying down means you're not getting anything done. Maybe that's ADHD's problem. Maybe it's God's. If so, stop immediately.
Even more realistically (now with bonus continuity!), if you replace Twitter with Mastodon, you're not solving being yelled at and staring at Trump's face sometimes. Doing that is like throwing away toast that's moldy on both sides and replacing it with toast that's only moldy on one side.
The moral of the story is, scrolling endlessly on TikTok isn't great. Doing nothing instead isn't great either. If the rest of your toast is moldy on one side like mine is, though, then whatever. Try a hobby, maybe?
What I think a lot of us need to start doing is prioritizing our time better, now that we (gen z, mostly) are starting to get jobs in this age. Me included. Aim towards that. Find something cool to do.
Just... don't do nothing all day. Thanks.
[1]: When I say this, I don't actually specifically mean lesbian catgirls and gay protogens. I mean, broadly, the “nerdy part” of the queer community. I'm just being silly.