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the darkness of night

~tffb

Here I am, in the Midnight Pub - yet, I am physically sitting in a pitch black room except for a dimly lit electric candle. It has a flickering effect to it, makes it "feel" like authentic candlelight. Between that, the hot coffee, the tasty cigarettes, and the cool St Louis County night air - I feel right at home both with my thoughts *and* in my actual home. Cozy, comfy, just pleasant and calm in every way.

I plan to make this little set up a ritual for myself on the nightly if I can (and there is no reason I couldn't). So, this will happen.

And since others are writing about presence, and non-presence on the WWW, I will have a say, too.

I cannot say I am very anonymous on the Internet. I don't use social media any longer (it has been 1.5 years) - other than the occasional Mastodon account I create, and keep for a few weeks, then end up deleting, LOL! I use my *actual* initials for my W.a blog (TMO), and people can guess my last name from my landing page URL. And I 100% understand anonymity, and remaining private, safe, and secure on the Internet (it is really common sense/second nature to many folks by now to take precaution when on the Web to not get "hacked" or not use a weak password, and this and that). I agree with this caution, very much so. But I view the scenario from an angle of wanting to be "digitally off the grid". My family members can contact me through Signal or ProtonMail (or phone call or just stop by my home, if they like), and the same goes for certain friends - but, I don't tend to share a whole lot besides what it posted (all the time, really) on W.a, and every so often on Snap.as. My only "regret" is that I still use YouTube (for watching, not content creation) - but, monopolies are going to monopoly, and I don't see a whole lot I can do about that situation (trust me, I've tried to quit YT multiple times).

So rather someone stays away from mainstream sites/services, or swims in the ocean of cookies, trackers, social media, and everything else - I hope we can all find a bit of respite here at the M.p, and have cold drinks on this dark corner off Mainstreet :)

Hope you're all well

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~brokenatlas wrote:

Youtube is the only one I wish I could do without, but can't unfortunately. Need to fix the car, fix the washing machine, grow tomatoes, repair your phone? YouTube. It's a necessary evil.

I'm a sysadmin by trade and thank goodness 90% of the job related internet searches I make, return results I need to read. Though most of those are StackExchange/StackOverflow/Reddit (Reddit has become a cesspool in its own right.)

I miss the days all interactions on the internet were like this. Small communities, simple interfaces, where you just enjoy the people that are there. I'm am so glad I found this place!

~tskaalgard wrote:

I regret that I still use YouTube as well. I've tried to use Invidious exclusively but the thing about those privacy-friendly frontends is that the megacorp plays whack-a-mole with them and you never know if an instance will work or not.

~abacushex wrote (thread):

Well said and thank you :)

I can't quit YT either. There is PBS SpaceTime, and Numberphile, and VSauce. But as the old(?) adage goes, never read the comments. I find it easy to keep YT from being 'social'. And if the marketing engines or the NSA profiles me for liking physics and math and obscure topics... well, they're not wrong...