It feels like all the joy I used to feel from being an enthusiast has been completely voided as computing has become the modern vector for fascism and surveillance. I find myself recoiling from all online spaces, even independent and open source ones that I’d loved and supported in the past.
It’s been an exceptionally strange impulse to go from having an elaborate online presence to now feeling like the only acceptable way to engage with the network is to have as minimal of an online footprint as possible.
This especially hurts when it feels like an issue of skilling, where I know how to do certain tasks with computers, but have to teach myself for the first time the analogue alternatives that my parents and their parents likely already knew well.
How have you chosen to deal with it? Do you find yourself moving away from computing and the internet, despite formerly loving it as a hobby? Have you replaced things that computers used to do for you with analogue replacements?
I’m curious how other people are experiencing this.
A friend of mine asked me why I put forth so much work into protecting my privacy when my best efforts still amount to a leaky seive. I’ll never forget my reply - “Just because I’m losing doesn’t mean the fight isn’t worthwhile … if we give up, the open internet dies with [my generation]. For me, success is keeping the idea alive to be rediscovered by the next generation. If I don’t do it, what hope do they have?”
I wasn’t super into DC comics, but the cartoons were what was on when I would stay with my grandmother, and a certain episode of Superman with Dr Fate really moved me.
There was some terrible magical threat, and Superman had tried to get Dr Fate to help, but he refused with something like, “I’ve banished this threat countless times, yet every time it returns stronger. No matter how hard I fight, mankind continues to torment one another. Evil continues to rear its ugly head. I don’t know if I can still triumph, and I’m so very tired.” And Superman was like “F U I’ll do it myself,”
While Superman was fighting, Dr Fate suddenly showed up with the assist and managed to seal away the bad dude. Superman said something like, “I thought you were done with this fight,” and Dr Fate’s response has stuck with me all these decades:
“You made me realize evil isn’t the only force that keeps coming back.”