Disillusioned with social media
I wrote a couple posts ago about spending 4 weeks without YouTube:
I actually ran the streak up to 60 days before breaking it last week, in order to look up materials for voice training. It was apparent, very quickly, that I didn't somehow cultivate a skill for using YouTube responsibly; I wasted several hours over a few days watching videos, again. I'm struggling to go whole days without opening it to assuage my boredom. again.
Even while I had my streak going, though, I wasn't really pushed away from screens. I was engaged in check-mania for the feeds I allowed myself: Tumblr, Mastodon, Gemini, and RSS. I've woken up this morning fairly disillusioned with all of it.
I've been lonely, lately. Online community can be nice, but passively consuming content isn't online community. I'd like to engage with my computer in a more intentional way, engage with the internet in a way actually conducive to community. I think I may want to move away from Tumblr/Mastodon to achieve that; focus on being an active member of ~town, instead, where I chat with and engage with a smaller community. I want to have fewer places to check.
I'm thinking of reducing my focus on geminispace, too. Most of the people I truly enjoy reading there are mirroring their writing to the regular web. I think it'd be nice to consolidate all my feeds down to RSS over HTTPS, then I can use an RSS-capable email client like Thunderbird to have a single place to check everything. Then, in lieu of commenting, respond to posts via email or making a post of my own. Or both, like ~dozens said.
This would have the added benefit of reducing the sources of algorithmic doom for me. Much as I love the transfeminist discourse of tumblr, it's also depressing. Much as I love the occasional posts by my friends on Mastodon, they're doing a lot of reposting politics. And I'm painfully aware of the politics.
I haven't committed to anything yet. But, if my tumblr and fediverse presence disappear in the coming days, well, this is why.