i've been kinda in the weird state of quietly grieving the old internet this past week ngl.

basically readying myself mentally to cold turkey leave social media for good if it comes to that with the recent slew of age verification laws (since my state was included in it too). uploading identifying documents? not gonna happen. that's a red line for me. i'll fuck with VPN's/minor workarounds as long as those work but I'm one of those bastards who actually gives two shits about privacy regardless how "dead" it is lul.

social media i'm most likely to leave/most likely to enforce age verification, my guess: tumblr, bsky, discord, mastodon, itch.io (honestly i'm this close to just deleting mastodon and cara.app. they're just not worth it for me).
social media i'm least likely to leave: email (with a privacy conscious host), dreamwidth (i feel like they would fight it all to the bitter end), website (they already have the legal documents you need for website hosting, but are exceptionally privacy conscious too).

so like, i'm not just gonna up and desert my website/this diary, but it'll be much more of a "write only" approach.

i've got enough books & steam deck games backlog to last me at least another five-ten years, at least until a better version of the internet comes along. also got some delicious art projects to occupy me for about the same time, and the pen pal group all has each other's addresses. in the oddest of ways i'm actually looking forward to ~returning to offline~ since that was always kinda... my default? (i kind of like being slightly unapproachable? not in an unfriendly way that makes people feel bad, more of a chronic exhaustion way.)

grieving the potential of the internet. but i feel like it's better for me to just accept that what i knew ain't comin' back. frankly ai slop/DDoS'ing broke it irreparably the last three years. so it's a long overdue coming-to-terms. frankly i feel better already just... letting it go.

it's wild re-listening to old music when i first "got online". remember supermassive black hole by muse? i remember when it was uploaded lol.

anyway that's the soundtrack in my head for this mood. wrapping up loose ends for this next phase.

using this from karel  as a selfship meme :P


( sfw/nsfw questions under the cut! )

it is going to be amazing when i can tell you all the absolute funniest way ever i think one can bullshit-trick your brain into enjoying backgrounds. (remind me in august.)

anyway, having a lot of fun working, drawing, reading, and gaming. i think i'm at my most content with life doing a balance of those four things and yeah, just quietly vibing in my corner here for the last few months and steadily seeing more quantifiable progress in all four of those areas (also just chatting with more friends in general behind the scenes too).