i have written a post. it's long, entirely personal, and it makes me feel very vulnerable.
on socialization, social media and emotional maturity, or: how i learned to stop worrying and become the change i wanted to see in the world
i feel like people don't take it seriously enough when i say that my life is online and think i'm just being cute
the internet was never a tool or a distraction for me
the internet is my home and my home is being taken over and destroyed
that is perhaps another blog post i should write
@anna i found that forcing myself to make even the smallest, most inane of posts on my forum, has put new ideas on things to do in my head. i've yet to find the time to spend on working on them, but at least they're written down somewhere now
@mavica_again read the above blogpost and this thread and i feel like i can relate to this heavily, thank you for writing this
@esm i'm really glad it's resonating with more people, thank you for reading it
@mavica_again
I have a similar experience. I've taken a huge step back from any kind of mainstream platform, or even devices, and honestly my life's been better for it.
I engage more with mastodon than I've engaged with any kind of social community online in a long time. I've also started to get back into forums too.
I've taken to calling the non-social media internet the "outernet," and the vibes on this side are very reminiscent of the time when we were all weirdos and outcasts on here.
@mavica_again I think we need to draw a hard distinction between the mainstream internet and the outernet to have a healthy engagement with it again.
@bibbs i've heard it as "small web" or "indie web" but it just doesn't feel like a really... contiguous thing to me?
not that i think the distinction is a bad thing just i don't feel it does much in the grand scheme of things
not sure what kind of online place i'm in that i could call a "home". maybe my group chat of 3 (active) friends? it's the only place i felt like i could reliably start and take part in conversations. only recently is there barely enough converation between other people for it to feel like a place and not just me messaging whoever looks at it
@mavica_again I’m on a journey to find the joy in the things I used to love (e.g. music, photography, games). A lot of it has involved moving away from tech or platforms I think killed my joy (e.g. phones, streaming). Some of it involves experimenting with things I’ve never had the opportunity to experience (your projects with gameboy-inspired filters and processing come to my mind in that regard). I really admire your creativity and it makes me want to keep working on resurfacing mine as well.