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Title: I'm losing my love of tech...
Date: March 31, 2025 (Edited late March 31, 2025)

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 Okay, so that date above is a slight lie. I'm starting to write this on the
30th, but meh... Thing is, after a lot of bullshit going on in the tech world,
I'm starting to lose my love for it. That is, anything involving "modern" tech
has lost my interest. I still love my older OSes and machines, but the non-stop
fighting and smug asshatery from the FOSS world, the AI witch hunts, the ruins
brought by AI scrapers... I'm sick of it.

 It's honestly no wonder so many devs have turned to farming and the like,
given how much burnout and trauma they've likely had to face. Not just from the
flamewars and asshole users, but from the management hell of various distros,
other devs who give a "my way or no way" attitude, and just... The whole thing
has kinda started going to shit. AI-loving "bounty seekers" haven't helped much
in that area, nor have the attention seeking parts of the security industry.

 It's part of why I've started looking toward smaller communities, like the
permacomputing[0] efforts, uxn[1], the classic and retro computing communities,
and...well, I've been transitioning away from tech as a focus myself. Green
living and design has taken more of a front seat for me when it comes to my
hobbies, especially for tiny housing, vanlife/urban camping, off-grid life, and
DIY.

 In fact, after nuking almost /all/ of the tech-oriented channels from my
YouTube subscriptions and RSS feeds, I've been focusing on things like DIY and
low-tech channels, vanlife and urban camping vlogs, off-grid life vlogs, tiny
home and alternative housing documentary channels, and...artist and author vlog
channels. There's a *little* overlap in some areas, like Protesilaos Stavrou[2]
who talks about Emacs while also vlogging about his off-grid lifestyle, but
most of it has been without much in the way of tech.

 I might add channels about gopher, gemini, smolnet, and smolweb stuff to my
RSS feeds, but I'd rather see those topics get mixed into talk about topics of
permacomputing, green living, and so on. Hell, /maybe/ I'll talk about some of
that stuff myself at some point. Not sure yet, though I wouldn't mind doing a
bit of vtuber vlogging or talks on YT and maybe Peertube. But again, "tech"
wouldn't be the star of those talks, but rather how it's integrated into other
aspects, like using a lower-powered device with a solar system, or setting up
ad-hoc wireless networks instead of relying on the Internet, or repurposing a
damaged device instead of just chucking it out as ewaste. If I had the needed
equipment to do it, I'd love to build my own battery wall and recell my laptop
batteries myself, since I /can/ do that with the devices I have.

 Of course, there might be some that are tech-oriented. Things like NNCP[3],
gopher, gemini, BBSes, and just basics of things like email and NNTP would be
topics I could cover for people who want that off-grid mentality of not relying
on being online 24/7. `offpunk`[4] is something I plan on getting working once
I can get a stable Linux install on my laptop again[^0][^1], and became a bit
of an inspiration for me a few times over. So did the Hundred Rabbits[5] duo of
Rekka and Devine, their trips across the ocean in their boat, and the creation
of `uxn`, which I'd love to cover at some point.

 Yeah, writing this down has helped me work a lot of things out. I might keep
this exclusive to my own gopher server, just to keep myself sane. Not sure yet.
Maybe I'll sleep on it, or start writing out ideas to get them out of my head
and into something I can see for myself. I've got plenty of time to think.

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 So, I pulled this post off of my phlog for good reason: I want to clarify
some things, but I don't want it up while I figure out my words. Particularly,
I wanna clarify this part in the first paragraph:

> ...but the non-stop fighting and smug asshatery from the FOSS world...

 See, I don't hate FOSS. Linux was the first OS I actually fell in love with,
but not the first I used. I used MS-DOS and Windows 98/ME before it, before
trying out /Mandrake Linux/ somewhere around late 2001 and early 2002. What
killed my use of it was the constant in-fighting and flamewars I ended up being
pulled into at random, and the fighting over every little aspect of the OS that
so many people try to force onto others. It put me in such a bad place mentally
that **Mac OS X** was what healed my love of tech at the time.

 Yes, I went from Linux to MacOS back in 2012. I started with Mountain Lion
(10.8.x), and I loved it because everything was so much simpler. It completely
countered all of the hate and attacks I heard about it from the Linux community
while I was part of it, and that enraged me even more. They always talked about
the "Reality Distortion Field" and how Apple was basically mind-controlling the
users, but the truth was that Linux had (and still has) a similar problem:
its own users want to control others not only in what they use, but how they
use it. They just went about it through peer pressure, mockery, and personal
attacks.

 It wasn't until recently (about 2019) that I really started to encounter the
/sane/ part of FOSS again. I found people on YouTube like Veronica of
"Veronica Explains"[6], Bread of "Bread on Penguins"[7], Michael Horn[8], and
Kelvin Shadewing[9]. I found small communities of people who didn't just blast
others for using something else. I found people who were actually /pleasant/
to be around and talk with, instead of hearing about little outside of FOSS
activism, politics, and how much "the other side" sucked[^2].

 Of course, I still see that toxicity, especially among people who insist that
social media is the /one true solution/, and on various issue trackers where
I feel for the devs having to deal with it. But I've been blocking out enough
that I'm starting to see /less/ of it. I won't pretend to be part of the larger
Linux community anymore, but I've found people I can actually enjoy talking
with, and that's enough for me on that front.

 But getting support on Linux? HAH! I've had enough experiences to traumatize
me for years to come trying to get help, and sometimes by proxy as the person
helping others with their own Linux problems. Just recently, I assisted someone
in dealwith with /Timeshift/ filling up their root drive (they didn't even know
what it was before then), and the absolute joy when we got Ubuntu booting again
was...cathartic. It showed that /actually/ helping people was **far** more of a
boon for Linux adoption than dunking on them for mistakes or what applications
they used on their personal machine. This person became *more* willing to keep
going with the OS because of that assistance, and that felt good to see.

 That's also what got me to give Debian another shot on my Latitude E6430, and
to try and move back over. Not the idea of my MacBook breaking, or any of the
"advancements" in Linux. Sure as hell not /influencers/ on YouTube and such.
Being able to make a difference and bring happiness to others in this miserable
world was encouragement enough to make another attempt. That should say many
things about my feelings on the subject.

 And I think I've rambled on more than an indigo raccoon at this point, so I
shall end off and re-upload this now.

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[0]: https://permacomputing.net/
[1]: https://100r.co/site/uxn.html
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/@protesilaos
[3]: https://nncp.mirrors.quux.org/
[4]: https://offpunk.net/
[5]: https://100r.co/site/home.html
[6]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMiyV_Ib77XLpzHPQH_q0qQ
[7]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwHwDuNd9lCdA7chyyquDXw
[8]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1s1OsWNYDFgbROPV-q5arg
[9]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ2yxS_SfAYyWSgn2XHQQTw

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[^0]: I've been getting help with making a gameplan about that, because as much
     as I love my MacBook, I still want a bit of futureproofing on that front.
[^1]: Funny enough, while writing this I actually started working on getting it
     going. Here's hoping another failed GRUB update doesn't hose the poor
     machine again. And no, still not using a Wayland compositor.
[^2]: In this case, "the other side" meant non-Linux/FOSS users, /and/ in some
     cases, people using distros other than Arch. I swear that community is
     more of a liability to Linux adoption than even the FSF sometimes.

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