cracking open the new blog like a journal
It is hard, as a person with a history of paranoia, to exist in the current state of the internet.
It was difficult for me to decide to officially leave Meta's properties. You see, I had a maladaptive coping skill in my teens and twenties of deleting accounts, purging friends lists, and erasing my online presence whenever I was in severe distress. It's a skill I'm proud to say I haven't turned to in several years... but part of the process of leaving Facebook has definitely activated those signals in my brain. The ones that say mortal peril.
But at the same time, I have wanted to leave Facebook for years. I've done a fabulous job of reducing my usage! I rarely post, mostly observe, and typically only go on Facebook when utilizing specific features (such as groups or marketplace). But committing to really quitting felt too hard. Nearly two decades of memories stored in one place; profiles of loved ones who have passed away; industry connections and local mutual aid groups... there was a lot to love, even as Meta proved itself to be poisonous time and again.
The announcement that Meta would roll back LGBTQ+ protections got me to quit at last. I guess you could say I'm grateful that they finally took the mask off... but I'm not. I'm pissed, honestly. It says a lot about the utility of Facebook and Instagram that I continued to use them, even though I found their enshittifcation of online spaces appalling. It's frustrating to have to rebuild networks from the ground up.
At this moment, I am reminding myself that destruction is necessary to bring about change. That creation is born by sweeping away the rubble. It doesn't change the frustrations... but it tempers them.
The place I feel most lost right now is in deciding... how do I want to handle privacy in this incarnation of my digital self? A certain level of openness is required for a blog to fulfill its functions, after all. I can't just never mention my career, my city, and my hobbies... but I would also like to keep this blog as free from prying eyes as I possibly can. I will probably only mention my normie activities here - if you want to talk about spirituality and chronically online parts of my life, you might look elsewhere.
I may at some point look into adding comments, but for now, feel free to send me an email if you have anything to say in response to my posts. For now, it's getting late, and I must consider heading to bed.
ever yours, AL
ps. yes I know Google is also guilty of evils... divorcing them is also on my slow moving laundry list. the tech industry truly has sunk its claws in deep....