old internet?? (´TωT`)

1738014702

also, i hope you know that youre not the only one feeling like this. people want to return to something they feel was better before, but we all have to be careful not to misremember what *actually* happened. in some circles, it was easier to be yourself, sure, but that's mostly if you were maintaining your own actual web page (think like having a neocities these days). if you were on any bigger, centralized social media platform, i would actually argue that it was much harder to be yourself if you were anything other than the most normie of norm.

gamergate stuff was only a decade ago, give or take a few years. i still remember being forced off many accounts on supposedly safe places because every "ally" would point out my neurodivergence, gender, social standing, etc.

i think a more pressing thought than "i wish we could go back to the old web", to me, is the thought of "we should be able to move forward and develop, while letting people disconnect if they want". but this last bit is my opinion, so its alright if others think differently teehee

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1738014223

the easiest way to experience how the Internet used to feel back in the day is to use it less often. full stop.

i would recommend removing some apps, especially some social media, off your mobile device(s), and instead switch to viewing those places through the web on an actual Sit Down And Use computer. laptop or desktop is fine, although for longer sessions a desktop will be much better for your health --- laptops can cause some pretty nasty repetitive strain injury if youre not careful. while youre at it, you can get something like uBlock Origin to help block ads --- ublock origin is actually a wide-spectrum content blocker, so it does block ads but you can also right click anything on any webpage and make it so it blocks that thing too. *really* great for blocking those annoying "pwease considew donating mowneys fow ouw poor widdwe sewvews" type things, and account creation nagging stuff and the like.

the reasoning for all this is that "back in the day" we didnt have quite the near instant connection to the Web around us at all times pinging us for every notification on every possible site we visit. im not saying that phones are bad, im not saying that social media is bad. im saying that it used to be when you wanted to go offline, you could close your browser, turn off your computer, and go do whatever else you wanted to do without it really bugging you that much. *everyone else did pretty much the same thing,* and if someone left some message to you there was a mutual understanding that you would see it and respond to it *when you came back.* there was substantially less of an obligation to reply quickly. if anyone was emailing me back in like, the late 2000s, and told me i "left them on read", i would probably block their email address from sending anything to me lol

this isnt an exact science and really you should just do things the way you wanna do em, whatever feels best and right. im only describing a little bit of what ive been doing personally to help ease the Bad Feelings i get when trying to stay online these days. for me, i found the thing that really helped the most was to be able to disconnect more easily *when i wanted to*. so, for me, that meant turning the whole process of getting online into more of a ritual. its much, much, much easier for me to keep the Web stuff out of my sleeping when the computer is literally in a different room, you know?

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