Old Dork Yells at Clouds

The general consensus of people who grew up on the early Internet is that it is dying. At least, the places on the Internet that still capitalize the word as if it was a proper place. However, folks slightly younger than me insist that the Internet has been dead since September 1993. I don't think either is the case, but the independent spirit of the Internet is gone. Everyone is siloed in the one site that they regularly use. For the olds, it's Facebook. For the kids, it's Tik Tok and the walled garden of app stores. My generation, the older cohort of Millennials, really doesn't have a place. Our places have nearly died out - the loose collection of blogs and forums on the open web. The perpetrator? The same thing that kills everything good - capitalism.

It's time to fix it. You can still host a blog on a box in the closet like this one. You can still federate via RSS, or if you are on the COPE-ing edge, something like the Fediverse. That's not me. I don't really care about amplifying my voice. If people somehow find this, that's cool. If people don't, I'm fine with that as well. Is yelling into the digital void better or worse than social media shitposting? If I write and no one reads it, that is far more ethical than writing junk that is consumed by the multitude through social media amplifiers. Perhaps a Hippocratic Oath for the Internet is needed - post, but do not amplify or publish beyond your network neighborhood.

I tried to find a platform to write on that I liked. I tried cohost. That didn't work out very well. I still like their anti-software manifesto, it's a shame that it didn't work out. I tried writing through Listed, the Standard Notes blogging platform. I didn't really care for their style options, but other than that, Listed was perfectly cromulent. Standard Notes has a less radical longevity statement than cohost's anti-sfotware manifesto, but that doesn't seem to have stopped them from being bought by Proton. Maybe the idea that capitalism ruins everything isn't so radical?

It's time to tap into the old Internet's DIY spirit. Host your blog in a box in your closet. Don't even try to be sustainable or ethical. Just post.