kradeelav | (no subject)

i've been kinda in the weird state of quietly grieving the old internet this past week ngl.

basically readying myself mentally to cold turkey leave social media for good if it comes to that with the recent slew of age verification laws (since my state was included in it too). uploading identifying documents? not gonna happen. that's a red line for me. i'll fuck with VPN's/minor workarounds as long as those work but I'm one of those bastards who actually gives two shits about privacy regardless how "dead" it is lul.

social media i'm most likely to leave/most likely to enforce age verification, my guess: tumblr, bsky, discord, mastodon, itch.io (honestly i'm this close to just deleting mastodon and cara.app. they're just not worth it for me).
social media i'm least likely to leave: email (with a privacy conscious host), dreamwidth (i feel like they would fight it all to the bitter end), website (they already have the legal documents you need for website hosting, but are exceptionally privacy conscious too).

so like, i'm not just gonna up and desert my website/this diary, but it'll be much more of a "write only" approach.

i've got enough books & steam deck games backlog to last me at least another five-ten years, at least until a better version of the internet comes along. also got some delicious art projects to occupy me for about the same time, and the pen pal group all has each other's addresses. in the oddest of ways i'm actually looking forward to ~returning to offline~ since that was always kinda... my default? (i kind of like being slightly unapproachable? not in an unfriendly way that makes people feel bad, more of a chronic exhaustion way.)

grieving the potential of the internet. but i feel like it's better for me to just accept that what i knew ain't comin' back. frankly ai slop/DDoS'ing broke it irreparably the last three years. so it's a long overdue coming-to-terms. frankly i feel better already just... letting it go.

it's wild re-listening to old music when i first "got online". remember supermassive black hole by muse? i remember when it was uploaded lol.

anyway that's the soundtrack in my head for this mood. wrapping up loose ends for this next phase.

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...at least until a better version of the internet comes along.

this has me thinkign of what some tech weirdos (extremely positive) will string together should this law actually come into place, and how fast id sign up for an internet like this. i wonder if private hosts like squidge would have to bend the knee to this, and if yes, if i need id to host a website there...

this post makes me think a lot, and maybe i ought to clean up my 600 different emails...and download more tv shows...and books...and games....

oh god, if ao3 makes me use an id to verify....oh gawwd

Edited 2025-07-02 15:33 (UTC)

haha you and I had the same thought about dreaming what tech nerds will string up next. it's a big reason why i'm actually hopeful about all of this in the 10-20 year range; there was a period where VHS technology was being fought by the big media companies because of its copying/piracy technology, and it ended up winning. sneaker-net type of places like yggdrasil and the meshnet already exist, to boot.

and it's all vibes but i really think ao3 will fight as much as dreamwidth to not do age verification; being privacy conscious is written into its bones in ways that corporations don't recognize.

>> grieving the potential of the internet

That's such a way to put it, in the 90s and 00s, it was just this... infinite potential. anything could happen. all these emergent websites that were so incredible (even the chans, hehe) in how they connected people, concepts, let us talk to people on the other side of the world, let people who liked One Obscure Video Game find one another, and now it's just a Marketing Machine in every sense of the word, any connection that happens feels so incidental to its functioning, a lure more than the prize

>> i kind of like being slightly unapproachable? [...] more of a chronic exhaustion way

I feel this so hard, I go through phases of it where I just... shut down. Entirely understandable.

Honestly, this has me thinking back to before discord and other... "instantaneous" and mobile chatting methods, where I'd just have hundreds of message long email chains with folks spanning years, because my old phones didn't have twitter or anything, and livejournal loaded like shit on them, but they always had email.

fwiw, I feel you on the grief, and put a hand on your shoulder over it.

especially when it was the folks drawn to videogames and fantasy worlds and tech already kinda alienated in ways from the pop culture then... it's so easy to forget how wildly it's changed there. fandom's mainstream now in ways it wasn't even when we were.

'a lure more than the prize' is such a poetically, powerfully beautiful way of putting it. you really do have a way with words.

mmhmm, it's such a disorienting shift, the "mainstreaming" of fandom and webspaces in general - it's something I've always had such complicated feelings about and the numerous factors feeding into it

♥ thanks, it really just... it's disappointing to go from spaces that literally existed just for people to communicate to spaces that offer that as a perk so they can sell you shit

Completely understand + agree with the state of grief. I too would have no qualms with restricting myself to Dreamwidth and email if it came right down to it — it'd probably actually be better for me. lol

that really is the nuts and bolts of it, haha - dreamwidth feels so non-addictive/thoughtful in a way that's completely divorced from every other social media.

You might be interested in reading about geminispace. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemini_(protocol) It's an alternative web inspired by Gopher. Not a perfect fit for everyone, but if anything it is neat.

I didn't get to grow up with the old internet. I grew up on green DA though, which is probably the closest I'll get to understanding. After Eclipse, it's been hard to find a home on the internet that felt like a space I could make my own. The sterility of social media makes me feel like I'm forced to build persona based on the success of my posts. It creates a manipulated feeling; leaving such encouraged behaviors behind certainly wouldn't do me any harm! The age verification laws along with all the other red tape just creates more barriers. Hopefully we don't see any harm come to places like Ao3, but I have no doubts tumblr and discord are going to be getting chucked out the window soon as viable options.

We do need to shape up and build the internet we want. The potential exists as long as there are people who can defy the current state of reality, and envision something better. Fortunately, when backed into a corner, we humans get rather creative. I'm optimistically curious what visions will come to the internet within the next ten years, while I know that in certain respects it will only continue to get worse.

I can see myself continuing to use Dreamwidth and ao3 for a few years yet. Not sure about everything else though.

Oooh I think i've dabbled in visiting a few geminispace sites -- it's the text only version, right? the text only version alas limits what I can do art-wise but it sounds like an amazing haven for blogs/fanficcers especially if push comes to shove. Wonderful rec. :D

It's very interesting comparing notes with you and coming to remarkably similar conclusions about which sites are more likely to stick around versus not -- also you're dead on about the manipulation too.

No problem! Actually, you can upload images! Not high res, has to be under 20mg, and they aren't inline. but it can serve a look- especially for journals about fashion or food, small art galleries. Lagrange is a client for browsing gemini files, and can display images: ttps://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/

It's always interesting to me to read about others experiences cause it helps me reflect. Glad some of that was interesting to you too!

Edited 2025-07-03 22:39 (UTC)

!!! extremely delightful to hear - once when time opens up with me to fiddle around with tech stuff i might consider making a static mirror of my site :o thank you for sharing.