Disconnecting

A short blog about living in the real world instead of the internet.

I've been finding more and more reasons to leave the internet as a consumer of content and a commentator lately.

I've realized I talk about things I don't care about just because the option is there, and that people reply to that just because the option is there. Had we found each other in the real world we would just ignore each other and I'm willing to bet we would both be better off that way. Maybe this is because when interacting with people online I can't really relate to who they are at all, when outside of the internet I have some sense of who I'm talking to even if we've never met before. I can't hear an accent, or see how old someone is, or look at their hands to see what they've been through, or at their clothes to have a sense of their financial status, or to their default expression to empathize with what they are going through or to understand their mood.

Everything online is so generic and sterilized that it becomes frustrating to interact with anyone. My culture is so different from the general culture I encounter on the internet that I feel completely out of place. All the conversations are out of my realm of interest or the go out very quickly. Even in conversations about my country, by fellow countrymen, everyone acts so artificially I could be talking to a bot and not even notice.

I mentioned in another post how my day started in a bad mood because of a garbage comment section from AppleInsider. I happen to be interested in the upcoming Mac Minis Pro and Max, as I want one of those models to be my next working computer. For that reason I go to AppleInsider to check if there are any news about them or on the rumored March event where they should be officially announced. Alas, a news article about Texas suing Meta or something for misuse of private data regarding facial recognition. This kind of stuff is interesting to me, so I click on the thing and the first commenter is some asshole not even engaging with the post but rather just posting his gut reaction to the word Texas. After that the comment section went to shit about US elections and I was left hopelessly trying to see if anybody even cared about the article, but it had derailed already. Those bitter people just shared their bitterness and used the platform given to them to spout whatever unchangeable belief they have. It's like seeing religious zealots burning their neighbors to prove they are true believers and should be welcome to their version of paradise.

It's so hard to find content that focuses on actively filtering out that kind of behavior by simply not talking about it and by forcing people to not engage in that way. For this reason, I've been shedding stuff from my life. I've successfully stopped listening to podcasts that I'm not absolutely interested in because I found them to be disruptive to my own thinking patterns. Even podcasts about things I care about end up devolving into current events and news because that gives them more views, so I'm very strict on which ones I give a listen to. I've stopped watching youtube videos about current events, whether they are on the entertainment front, politics, or whatever. I actually feel bad about this, since that's how I ended up becoming an artist and how I got many of the jobs I've done over the years, but it's not worth it anymore. They are just distractions from what is actually important to me and I don't really need them at all to live or to work. There are so few shows and movies I end up enjoying that I honestly would rather enjoy them on my own and not hear anyone else have their input on them.

So, why am I making this public? The short answer that I'm making this public so people who are in this same situation know that this happens. I started getting into content that I genuinely enjoyed and over the years I've grown into a position of needing the content to be there instead of actually enjoying it. I ended up fucking up the way I think, the topics I think about, the way I talk to people, and the way I behave. I don't blame anyone in particular other than myself, but this sucks. I hate making something and while I'm making it thinking how a particular person would react, or imagine all the shitheads I dislike commenting on it. I just don't want that shit, I've gotten tired of it. Too much input from invading sources.

That said, I don't want pity comments, or 'advice'. This is just for me to make public like I would a piece of art. I don't really want any input, I've had enough of that to last me a lifetime.