Cut out Amazon. Quit facebook and twitter. What else, though? If the mighty dollar reigns supreme, and I wanna vote with my spending, what small steps can the average person make to disrupt the patterns of the nihilistic ego tripping energy vampires who are willing to burn it all down so they can live forever?
Went from Design Home Game to Cozee, switched from Amazon to Chewy for cat supplies, next phone will be a Pixel, and I can’t say the other
Slow tech. I recently transferred my music library from my laptop (mostly ripped CDs) to my phone. Love having offline access to my music. Listening to entire albums. Not paying money to Spotify that shills for ICE and is ripping off artists by creating AI music.
Going to buy a cd player and/or cd-rom and buy more CDs, or buy digital albums directly from artists.
A lot of people are buying iPods to do something similar, but your phone will do the same thing if you just remove the streaming apps.
I vote for listening to full albums as well.
As a youngster I used to have a massive playlist, only my favorite songs on it… These days I only listen to full albums, bad/weak songs and all. Its so much better. I’ve realised that a lot of the “bad” songs that I didn’t want to listen to as a youth, are not that bad actually.
I think there’s something to this. Even if the album isn’t great, simply sitting with it and experiencing it is instructive.
It’s strange to think, but in the late 90s, albums were a bit of a cynical play. “I like this band or performer, let me get all that they have to give. I will spend $20+ on an album where a $5+ single might have given me the best they had to give.”
Which is not a knock against the concept album. I quite like those. The Who; or more recently The Mars Volta.
But wrapping around to my point about slow tech — if you put an album in a CD player and listen to it start-to-finish — has something been gained? I would say yes. This is what the performer wanted you to hear. Good or bad.
I spent a lot of the pandemic learning about farm boxes and local produce. Now I spend most of my grocery money on local produce and whatever the farmer’s market has available. I try to pay cash everywhere they will take it because tech bros get money for most wireless transactions nowadays.
Costco has been the great balancer. It is quite progressive for a public company and supports DEI policies. It also has just about anything you can want. I bought my car through Costco and I use the Costco credit card. For all things there are alternatives to tech bros.
VPN, private DNS, no amazon or x or any of that trash. Open source if possible. Fediverse.
Its really not hard. The hard part is getting the normies off it. They’re purely addicted to slop.
Linux, fediverse, signal, matrix, self-hosting services like Jellyfin and Gittea, minimizing subscription services as much as possible, embrace physical media and retro gaming, touch grass, etc.
You would be amazed how much free and open technology you personally have access to, even on modest used hardware running out of your home.
Was never a problem.
Build and self-host stuff I don’t want to pay for.
Realise that you have a skill set, that you get paid for.
Literally touch grass, deal with normies.
Bang chicks, cause I can boost their social profile.
My thing is, is that it isn’t so much about the things I use rather than what these platforms expect me to be which is a good capitalist doggy. One that feels the need to always CONSOOOM, at any given time. I’m not really about that, for I value what money I get. So I go out and thrift, I don’t subscribe to twenty different subscription services. I don’t just buy things for the sake of buying.
It’s all a big mental game.
Lead a simple modest life.
Fuck all the globalisation and the fomo and the terminally online. You family and freinds and maybe your neighbours, that’s what matters. That’s what influences you personally the most.
Put a Pi hole on your home network
