Ask Lemmy

AI is the thing thats close to pushing me off. I've loved it less and less every day since it turned into a popularity contest, but it still had a lot of great stuff. Now its not even people pretending to be something they're not, its a computer program pretending to be somebody pretending to be somebody theyre not in the vain hopes that you'll LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE.

I'm not talented or special-skilled or super-interested enough in anything to warrant joining any niche forums. This right here is the last of my Internet I think. Once Lemmy is overrun by thots and bots I might be done.

I keep a book on my person at all times now. Instead of mindlessly grabbing my phone (internet propaganda portal), I'll grab the book instead. Been doing it about six months now, I like it a lot. I still havnt finished a book, I jump from one to the other very often, but I'm reading much more.

Its okay to sign off. I had a panic attack two weeks ago, and basically had to sign off for a time. I'm still keeping distance from the internet though. Renewing my love of reading has been a serious positive though.

I've given up on the super-corporate side of the Internet.

99% of my Internet use is Mastodon and Lemmy, both of which don't really represent "the Internet". I sail the high seas occasionally to help meet my other needs.

Yes, multiplayer gaming is toxic as hell. If I'm doing that, I have chat turned off, but mostly I've managed to finagle the Internet into my own personal, cozy little Hobbiton derivative, so it doesn't feel quite so toxic to me as it might to the population at large.

Pretty much. Recently got a device for Meshtastic, need to get around to playing with it. If I recall, SearX is an open-source search engine yeah? We should mod it to explicitly block the corpoweb as a whole and strictly favor results from foss and federated sources.

I am not giving up on the internet, but I have slowed down quite a lot in the past 5 years. I check very few sites anymore, I no longer game on multiplayer. In fact, I was even content being on a 50MBps internet plan. But, my ISP stupidly got rid of that plan so I find 100MBps too much for someone who isn't going to utilize all of its speed. I don't need anything beyond 100MB anyways.

Been online for over three decades, the internet has helped me in many ways, but it also has made me feel the worst of ways. Like having incredulous bouts of depression that yearns for yesteryear's internet because today's internet is all noise. It's just noise and nothing truly innovative has been made that is interesting. Everything that gets made, all serve means to increase advantages for those that cause problems.

If it hasn't happened already yet but I predict within the next 5 years, all I'm going to care about is just streaming and e-mail checking. I'll just join the old crowd.

I almost feel the same, too much USA doomnews about Trump and Epstein. Here, people break rules too, just to spam USA news 24/7.
My solution to combat this, was to block keywords(Lemmy) and access website I only need(forums, websites etc).

Good luck! Come back and let the rest of us know what it's like out there.

*humanity

but yes, i'm vastly returning to an offline, analog life.

when i stay on, it's self-hosted and smolnet

The Internet as a whole isn't the problem. Specific sites are. Steer clear from those sites, and you'll be just fine. Take notice of which sites and services result in negative emotions, and find alternatives to those places.

If you feel you have to step away, then do it for yourself - keep being mindful of the cause. Because it's not a shut and close situation.

Life is always changing, tonight you might not want the internet - half a year from now you might need a very obscure information and you will be able to look it up and log off again.

I love the internet, because it is amazing tool. And so much knowledge is at the tip of your fingerprints! In my childhood if I wanted to learn something I hoped we had the right book home, or it's library time with the cards and looking for books and hoping the book had an appendices...
Internet does have a rotten part to it - but to give up all the free education YouTube has, all the wikis on the world - it would be going backwards for me.

Set up your own website if you haven't already, the indie web/smallnet/etc movement lately has been really cool to see and has made the internet fun again for me. Neocities is a great place to start if you need simple hosting, completely free and without ads

I still doomscroll to stay a little informed but my recent salvation has been free ebooks on my phone. Same phone strolling action but instead of doom, I get fun little mysteries.

The Internet sucks now. There's just not "things" on it anymore. When I was a teenager, there was always something new and interesting to do online. Modern Internet is social media, streaming, and shopping. It's just not the same.

I'm ready to give up on most things.

Nah, it's just getting good. The Epstein/Mossad files are slowly melting the fascist tide by exposing the perverts behind the curtain. The billionaires are losing their control over information to first hand accounts posted live so we can all see the truth before the spin. The Internet is the forefront of understanding what is about to happen.

Don't quit now. If you want to see the truth, the Internet is the last place to host it unfiltered. Quitting is how the billionaires get people to only see the world through captured media.

Don't give up, stick to places that don't suck. Corpotrash is replacable

I understand completely but am trying to mold my access to the world in a way that doesn't cause me such depression. I don't use the normal social networks, I've used the piefed filters to block everything about musk, trump, ice, america, politics, etc. and I've never followed any kind of "news".

Before I did that, I was literally becoming chronically suicidal(well, that's not gone but it's better) from the absolute shit-show that the world has become(it's not just the US, other countries are quickly adopting the bipartisan hatred model now that they see it works to divide). It would be different if you saw something regarding a change towards improvement but that's never seen, you just get another endless scroll of shit that is destroying society with no way to change it.

The fediverse is just as bad as any other social network out there. Although the leaning is opposite, it's still full of extremism, hyperbolic hatred, ridicule, mockery, division and sufferporn. Without filters, it would be as unusable to me as, say, facebook or trump's social network.

I'm withdrawing a lot from people online but still spend a lot of time online, it's just not as interactive as it used to be.

If this is not sustainable, I'm sure I'll likely follow your lead and leave it to the rest of the world.

If the fediverse were to collapse, I'd be done. Its the one thing worth being hopeful about right now.

Still good to find "free" content 😏

You might be done with people, not the internet.

Yeah the internet is cooked.

Im trying to invest more time in off-line things.

Be mindful that it's a tool, use it to benefit youself

I jave been onlone from the dialup and BBS days of the 1980's when it was the reserve of nerds, it's accelerated the enshitifcation process in the last 20 years and commercialisation via advertising is why, it's the only reason Googke, Facebook etal exist

not this part

Clearnet is completely controlled by corporate advertisers. You're looking for I2P.

that sounds more like problems with IRL than problems with the internet