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.
Fortunately for me, using computers is not a source of income but a hobby, so I say this with an extremely privileged and ignorant point of view: I learn coding by reading books and experimenting. I learn Linux by reading the Arch and Gentoo wiki and experimenting. I have (thus?) no problem keeping away from the menace that is the addictive, toxic, detrimental internet culture of today and vibe coding and unattended OS installations and what have you. Does it give me a false sense of superiority? Yes. Does it also genuinely make me feel free and unburdened? Yes.