I'm setting out on my third major attempt to curb this by doctoring up my smart phone. Previous attempts were rebuilding an iPod to stop using my phone as a media device, buying a watch, ditching a laptop for a desktop, degoogling, converting to lineageOS, and committing to only using free and opensource apps, unpluq (kept plugging that stupid dongle into my phone so often I fucked up my port) simple launchers, and even a god damn fidget spinner. (That's a lot of time, money, and effort spent on something that's not that big of a deal./s) I'm currently using slimlauncher and have my phone on greyscale, and while I am doing okay, I'm a few days in... But I know I'm going to slip up, and keep chipping away at my resolve that keeps me from just undoing the counter measures I've set up. I built this cage and I sure as hell am gonna dismantle it.

I know the obvious solution is to have someone put parental controls on my device, it's sensible and keeps me from needing to buy a dumb phone... But oh my god, the absolute shame of telling someone in your life that you literally can't trust yourself to stop scrolling... It's humiliating. Plus losing agency over something I own rankles me.

Buying a hardware solution is attractive because it feels like agency. When people ask me why I want to find a smart phone alternative I keep comparing it to trying to quite smoking while still carrying a pack of cigarettes in your pocket. The temptation is CONSTANT. and DRAINING. This habit is actively derailing my life and impeding my growth, and I feel like I can't be taken seriously copping to it. I know it isn't the suffering olympics, but saying you can't stop using the internet as compared to saying you need help coping with substance abuse is like... "Just magically develop enough will power and discipline to just not do the thing you've done your whole life. This guy has a chemical dependency, what the hell is your excuse?" And I know this is real, and hard, and the psychology of it, but now suddenly I need to convince someone that I'm just as worse off as an alcoholic.

The irony of this is that I just got high as hell for the first time in months and only just realized how BIG of a deal this is for me. That this is going to be real work, and it isn't going to get easier any time soon. And with collapse brain, doing anything for my future benefit just feels like robbing Peter to pay Paul, and my ADHD brain means I'm already attempting this with a low amount of executive function.

... I know community is an important part of the fight for a lot of folks, and I guess that's the only reason I'm writing this up. I'm sure this isn't a new realization among folks dealing with this, but I needed to put this here more just to bookmark this moment for me... that what I'm feeling right now isn't a fleeting thought, it's a REALITY, my taking it seriously is an IMPERATIVE, and action is NECESSARY. I don't even care if this is coming off cheesy, if you are vibing with this great, but this is here for me. YOUR HIGH ASS WANTED TO TYPE THIS OUT AT 12:44 AT NIGHT BECAUSE THIS SHIT IS IMPORTANT AND YOU NEED TO GET YOUR LIFE ON TRACK!

And if I'm going to do this I am going to need some accountability, so I'm going online to ask a bunch of other people online who don't want to be online to help me stay offline online.

I have stuff I want to learn, a life I want to live... I'd appreciate you being in my corner.

God I'm not used to being this earnest, it makes my skin crawl.

#NoSurf #InternetAddiction #technologicalEmancipation #techEmancipation #AlgorithmEmancipation

This account isn't my first dance with Mastodon, but the first dalliance was so brief it may as well be. It's kind of funny that I did make a second attempt in the midst of the great bluebird migration, but this was the next step in my attempt to emancipate myself from big tech, streaming, and the algorithm. My first step happened because I hate ads with a passion, so I was paying for Spotify. I hated knowing the artists really weren't getting paid, and that Spotify seemed to be up to some shady shit, but I didn't know what to do about it until my job hosted an electronics recycling day... and in 2022 I got my first iPod. I dug out my hardrive from my first laptop and dumped all my old music from highschool on it, and y'all, my shit was WEIRD. It was a lot of fun getting reacquainted with my old tastes, and I started tracking down my newer stuff and adding it, but then I dropped my ipod and it couldn't play anything anymore with out skipping or freezing...

So I cracked that fucker open, dropped in a 256GB flash card, plopped a battery in that lasts me a week or two, downloaded Rockbox, and now I have a friggen FLAC player that can hold a quarter of a terabyte of music (apparently if I had any other model I could go in excess of a terabyte, but alas, mine has limits). I also gave it a new blue and rainbow anodized case, so this device is unmistakably MINE, which is such a rare thing in this age of identical glowing rectangles.

Then google started pestering me about running out of storage (amateur photographer woes) so I decided if I was going to have to pay anyway, I would damned if I gave any money to google... Hello Proton. Hello my first VPN. What can I do with that, I wonder?

The nicest thing about sailing the seven seas is now no one is trying to jam their movie and TV choices down our throats. I collect massive amounts of media now, largely spurred on as a response to the bloodbath that was the HBO/Discovery merger, but I only watch what I want to, which these days are mostly older shows that aren't designed to hook me into a binge. Getting to sit down with my partner and watch an episode of TNG or Northern Exposure, or Dinosaurs a few times a week feels a lot healthier than what we used to do... And cheaper. But now my samsung phone is acting up and asking for more and more permissions, and instagram still has it's hooks in me, and fuck it, rational or not, google can fuck right off...

So I got a refurbished pixel and converted it over to LineageOS. Suddenly my phone feels like a tool again. I use it when I want to, and I don't constantly have an algorithm serving me ads or media choices (I used Barinista for a bit, but it was like a nicotine patch that was super effective at weaning me off of insta. Thanks so much @austin for that!)

It took me a long time to start doing this. I've been talking about wanting to start gaining tech independence for years. I think a lot of it is my very ADHD tendency to want to do all or nothing. Of needing to know exactly what I was doing, how I was going to do it, and understanding it, and I am not a technologically savvy person. I just stumbled my way through this. Converting my first test phone (an old nextbit robin I dearly loved but that is too decrepit to use as a daily driver) to LineageOS took me three months. A day of frustration, a lot of downtime, and then a night where I decided I wasn't going to stop until it worked. Progress isn't linear. It was daunting to start all this, but my relationship with technology now is very different than it was over a year ago, and it's going to continue to change. I've become very interested in decentralization and community level mesh networking, repurposing old tech, trying to to make tech personal and fitting the needs of myself and my community. I want to help more people find their own way out of the walled gardens and algorithmic stupor. I want to help folks get started, and I want folks to help me and each other continue to gain more independence and help our tech better reflect our communities and their values.

#tech #technologicalemancipation
#techemancipation
#bigtech #lineageos #vpn #piracy #scavenge #solarpunk #streaming #spotify #netflix #hulu #ADHD #algorithm #ifixit #fixit #diy #repair #ipod #classicipod