The title may sound weird. I initially wrote it as “fuck over the billionaires”. But it is not only billionaires, but also multi-millionaires and people who think themselves hierarchically superior.
So:
- Are you doing something to fuck over “the powerful”? If so, what?
I’m here, for starters.
I’ve been systematically removing as many parts of myself from the corporate internet over the course of years. So far I’ve managed to drop:
I still have some stragglers, like YouTube, that I doubt will go anytime soon, but for the most part, I don’t have to deal with:
Really, I just do not like being advertised to, and outside YouTube sponsorships, which can be skipped, I can go whole days without ever coming across an ad on the internet, and even that feels high.
On top of all this, I’ve massively reduced my data collection footprint, meaning there’s far less info available to said advertisers and data collectors that they can use to manipulate me.
I also regularly try to provide some of this to my friends to also help cut them away from the propaganda machine.
YouTube, in my experience, has been the hardest one to fully cut. Sometimes you need a video tutorial for something, and there just… Isn’t one anywhere but YT. Also a lot of the content types just… Aren’t available elsewhere, and it was hard for a while not having some of my favorite YTers to watch. Nebula, and Dropout definitely helped with that part, though, they had enough that it made it easier.
It did make me realize how dependent I was on YT for emotional regulation, though. I have real bad anxiety, and I realized pretty quickly I was watching things to numb it. Podcasts, music, and to a lesser extent books/fanfic have helped with that though. Generally now I’m looking for people who want to make something good, not make money, and that’s lead me down a lot of really interesting rabbit holes in general with art
(I know a lot of artists are trying to make money, and pay your artists, but there’s a difference between “Making something that will sell” and “Making something you’re proud of hoping people will like it” y’know?)