Welcome to my corner of the internet, I hope you enjoy your stay.
Over the last few years I have been on a journey of breaking up with the internet. Many people have said similar things, but the internet isn't fun anymore, and I don't think that's because I'm suddenly less fun as an adult. My family and I have lots of fun and we love to be goofy with each other. As corporations take over larger and larger parts of the internet, they continue to suck to soul out of everything and the internet as a whole becomes much less fun to be on, but we spend more time on the internet now than ever before.
I noticed this specifically in myself when I downloaded TikTok. I downloaded TikTok a year or so after it first became a "thing," and I immediately started losing HOURS of my day to mindlessly scrolling videos. I deleted TikTok a few months after I got it, and I remember the night specifically.
My son went to bed early that night, my wife was out of town, and I didn't have anything to do in the morning. I was so excited to have some guilt free time to work on any of the number of projects that I have ongoing at any given time, I hurried downstairs and sat down in my office to figure out what I wanted to work on. I pulled out my phone instinctively and opened TikTok. The next thing I remember it was 4 in the morning, and I was trudging up to bed, having accomplished nothing. When I woke up the next morning I deleted TikTok, and thus began my journey of breaking up with the internet.
I've taken many steps, some of them missteps, in trying to get control of my various internet addictions, and maybe I'll spend some time writing another post about what worked and what didn't, but this post is just supposed to be a welcome to my corner of the internet, and it's already running long.
I don't like how attention grabbing the internet has become, and how everything needs to get boiled down to the simplest version of itself so its more easily digestible and people will read it and "like" it. I wanted a place where I could put my own thoughts, where I didn't have to feel any of that pressure. I also plan to add a connection to my Facebook account, which I don't use anymore but still has many of my friends on it, so that whenever I make a new post here it will make a post on my Facebook with a link so anyone who's friends with me there will hopefully see it.
There's no comments (though I'm open to changing that in the future, because I enjoy conversations on topics I find interesting). There's no likes. There's no algorithm.
This is my place to write what I want, how I want, and in a manner that suits my personality.
Thanks for reading. Tyler
If you enjoyed this post or wanted to talk to me about this post, feel free to email me, tylerjpurvis@gmail.com.