Bear(blog) sightings #2
I like to check up on what's happening in different indieweb corners and this post is an attempt at leaving a breadcrumb of a comment for the posts and authors that leave an impression on me. In today's edition of "What's happening on Bear blog", I saw a few interesting posts. They're not from the same browsing session but I had them open as separate tabs on my phone and I decided to clean house and group them together.
dr molly tov's blog
From Molly's blog, I saved two posts, the first one on cutting back on smartphone usage and the second one on cutting back on shopping. The common theme is cutting back on consumption, be it digital or physical. My current employment status being unemployed, I can't say I don't emphasize. I've stopped most if not all subscriptions that I used to have and what's left is the Hetzner VPS that this blog uses, some of my apps that run on the server and my domain name(s). I talked about this with my friends recently and we all feel like hunkering down and reducing consumption. We feel like it's the best course of action because you don't know what awaits us in the next few years on a local or global economic scene.
Molly mentioned that reducing smartphone usage has increased her attention span and I envy that. I'm not sure if it's the Apple brainwashing or the appreciation of product design, but I really like the glass and metal rectangle that I always carry in my pocket. I've found great use for its camera, notes, web connectivity, digital wallet capabilities and staying connected with friends and family. I wonder I would be able to survive without my phone if my smartwatch had a longer battery life and my laptop wasn't bound for its electrical outlet.
tiramisu's blog
Ah, trying to make your friends switch away from very convenient apps. A problem I've tried so fight so many times with mixes success. I managed to get one of my friend groups away from Messenger and onto Discord and that was a success but my family is only partially out of Messenger. They all have Signal but they don't use it because nobody else is on it - network effects. Cheers to doing our best to remove ourselves from enshittified platforms.
bluelander's blog
bluelander talks about their journey through hosting their site. I mentioned how I have mine on a Hetzner VPS which is not a full-blown self-hosting because I don't have the extra hardware to set it up. Hosting it Hetzner provides some convenience and it's pretty affordable considering the server can be reused for other apps as well. The only barrier is the time you can invest learning Dokku, Docker, and whatever apps you want to host there.
louplummer's blog and toska's blog
Louplummer and toska talk about navigating the switch away from email providers. Louplummer is untangling from Gmail and toska is considering the switch away from Proton. I have a Gmail, and ProtonMail and I've considered making the switch but it feels so daunting. So much of our daily lives rely on being able to access your email for verification that the fear of messing that up is too big. Another thought is appretiating the email operators that have the test of time - Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, etc. It's a service that many take for granted. At the same time many of those operators entrech users and make them dependent on the service. I wish there was a way to BE online without being dependent on a single service and being able to have options for those services like storage, email, hosting, while being able to easily migrate from one service to another. I'm exploring this potential future by looking into interoperability of hardware and software, protocols, etc.
Ava's blog
You don't have to engage with social media to be a positive influence, Ava. Your posts are always a breath of fresh air when I open Bearblog and your interactions with others on the site are great advocacy for the personal site and the indieweb. Keep up the good work!
Laura Michet's blog
Woah, a game dev in the wild! Congrats on the game launch but take care of yourself, Laura. The internets are not a friendly place when looking for feedback.
jcprobably's blog and 2keeb's blog
Both jcprobably and 2keebs wrote a rebuttal to Andy's post on focusing on posts that convert. I'm glad they had the energy to write their responses because I didn't feel like I had it in me. It's the same mentality that gives us AI/non-AI slop, Mr. Beast sensationalism, Twitter hivemind or other lizard-brain content. This type of media is not one that elevates us or brings us together but one that reduces us to excitations of our primal senses. I believe we're better than that and I work on defending my brain from this type of content by stepping back and letting the emotions subside. I believe this trains my resilience but it's exhausting. How much better would it be if our feeds didn't have this low quality content and we were able to focus on what's important in our lives? Of course, what's important is different for everybody and we can't generalize. Any attempt that I can think of that generalizes results in a brand new dystopia.