An Internet of One's Own

2026-01-13

It's not just AI, social media has been offloading our brains for years now, and we have fully accepted it. The outrage today against AI should be equally directed towards YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, and so on.
I realized this has been a major source of my depression (among many other things), because I stopped using my brain, and I've been hoodwinked so badly that I couldn't understand what exactly went wrong. I have never been an active user of social media, and I have never felt a sense of belonging on any platform, and yet I wasn't creative anymore, I wasn't getting excited about anything anymore, and I lost all of my interests because there has been such a barrage of information being crammed into my brain every day that I lost all sense of identity.

Of course, the internet isn't the sole source of this problem, but it sure doesn't help. The way social media is structured these days is blatantly commercialized, vain, vapid, vulgar, varicose... Wait. Huh?
Anyway, I am positively puzzled how real human interaction is actually supposed to take place on these platforms. I may not be hip with times, and I may be too socially awkward to participate, but I am sure this problem isn't experienced by me alone.
People crave community and acceptance, and I am no different. There is no shame in admitting this. However, the modern world has made it its mission to stifle this instinct to the best of its ability. This vulnerability is so elementary to exploit because it is our programming, and as we become more deprived we will accept whatever smidgen of socialization we are offered, whether it is fake or not, because it is easy, and creating your own safe space is hard.

I've been looking to create my own space within this site, because I am simply not having any luck finding a community that's right for me. My hope is that with time, I may find meaningful interaction by sharing some parts of myself somewhere where I have significant control and creative liberty - this is the best idea I could come up with for my particular (limited) set of skills, after so many years of nomadism and purposelessness.