A Mixed Post-Halloween Update

by Fate — —

Writing is tough lately. The original title of this post was “End of An Era”. I’ve been struggling to get going lately, so I present a scattershot of things really hitting me the past few weeks:

The Data Retrieval Project #

For those not in the know: Fin and I have a long running bet on “who can keep a phone for the longest”. This came after I ran through a number of budget phones, culminating with Fin challenging me that I couldn’t stay on a phone for longer than her. A couple weeks ago, she approaches me with a green screen, a loud sigh, and says, “you win”. We made the bet roughly 7 years ago - purchasing the same phones on the same day. We reset 3 years ago when our first phones went EOL.

Our current phones are degoogled (running GrapheneOS). We’ve been trying our best to navigate privacy conscious mobile use. Sadly, this bit us hard as the NextCloud app we were using for backups started malfunctioning this Spring. Ironically, I was working to bring up a better solution days before her phone went dumb.

I regret not fixing the damn thing earlier - but this year has been tough on the whole depression scale. While we managed to get Fin’s phone repaired (apparently the screen issue is bad enough that it’s fully covered out of warranty) - she lost a substantial amount of stuff from the past several months. Last weekend was “data retrieval” week - going through chats, written journals, server logs - everything we could find - to retrieve lost data. We did pretty well.

The whole experience motivated me to put the gas on updating the server, and we now have a MUCH better setup. For the curious, we’ve landed on a few pieces of tech that are working pretty well for us:

The Disconnection of People #

I logged into Facebook today. For 25 posts in my feed, a total of 3 were posts from people I have chosen to follow, and 0 were from “friends”. The other 22 posts were a mix of suggested and ads. Meanwhile, Reddit just announced that they are going “login only” starting at the end of the year. This is probably a net positive for me, as the reddit doom scroll is crack for ADD dopamine seeking. I know, it’s strange to go through the effort of degoogling and then run right back to the biggest spyware platforms out there. I do what I can to limit the spying. Still, the odd thing is - the internet lately feels like a ghost town.

I’d like to pause for a moment and ask - “What the Fuck Is Going On With People?” At the behest of my therapist - I’ve been trying my best to expand social connections for the past year. The experience has not gone well. I’ve lost count of how many local clubs / organizations / social groups I’ve run across that are dead or on barely hanging on life support. Landing at a local hacker meetup I found the total count prior to my arrival at 1. This was a group that previously had a decent showing monthly. The organizer comes just “to keep the light on”.

Meanwhile, I’ve watched a few groups of online friends disperse, and several of my old IRC hangouts are dead or very quiet. I’ve found many arguments against LLMs powerful, but the one that’s landing right now was something posted by the codeberg group: AI fueled delusions of community without any actual people.

Ouch.

The wired article urges us to “let the internet die”. I’m really grateful that during the brief window of my life when I most needed support - there was more than an algorithm on the other side of the screen. Despite the massive advancement in tech - I don’t see that the me of 20 years ago would have found any form of support network.

I could list out a lot of the old websites I used to enjoy that have since shuttered. Numerous online communities and forums are gone. I’ve been sitting with this reality for a bit. In some ways, I feel like I’ve been working through the stages of grief for the old web.

I usually try to end on a positive note. Here’s my best attempt: I’m still here and I’m writing. There are others out there. Hopefully we can find ways to connect.