I’m starting to wonder what the real benefit even is anymore. Between the technofeudal landscape we live in, where billionaires own the means of communication, data is constantly mined for profit, and surveillance is baked into every layer, it feels like I’m standing at the beach, using my bare hands to push back an endless tide.
Even when I take the so‑called “liberated” path through Linux, self‑hosting, and privacy tools, it often feels futile. The web itself is poisoned. Browsers are turning into tracking engines. Sites rely on manipulation and dark patterns. Social media is full of misinformation and ragebait.
Even open-source projects are being pulled under corporate influence (ex: Firefox adoption of AI).
It feels exhausting to route around a web that’s already been captured.
So I’m asking myself: what’s the point? Why not just step away?
Why not trade the illusion of digital control for actual peace, get a dumb phone, a CD player, and check out books, movies, music, and games from the library as my entertainment?
Does anyone else feel this way? Have you found ways to reconnect with technology?
I’ve gone the other way with it. I feel galvanised to try and help the laymen break free from our digital prisons; attempting to migrate people to decentralisation as a concept; as in my eyes it’s the only way we’ll ever move out from under this technocratic structure we find ourselves stuck in.
It’s one hell of an uphill battle, but the hardest part (convincing others to try something new) is becoming easier just thanks to the rampant enshittification in every product. My driving force for most of it has been the desire to see my country break free from reliance on American tech; which if you know anything about the UK; it’s an incredibly pie in the sky ambition… But I remain hopeful.
My advice would be to learn (if you’re not already familiar ofc) containerisation as a concept and spin up services that offer real alternatives to what people rely so heavily upon.
The only way the world can escape the likes of Zuckerberg and Musk, is if people like me and you show them how to implement an alternative.
I have to admit I gave up a bit on resisting.
When I quickly want to look something up and are hit with “Allow all tracking or manage your choices?” I click allow, cause it happens 20x a day and I’m done with this shit.
I use the default apps on my phone cause I don’t have the whole day to customize after switching phones anymore.
I uninstalled NoScript cause it made the internet unusable.There is the whole thing with hospitals using technology and I do like navigation systems and such too.
But yeah apps in general if I find myself using too much I will delete on spot and social media layouts were too confusing for me anyways.
Only exception has been voyager because it’s a source of news not funded by literal fascists.
Yeah im currently on a sabbatical and I dont think I will go back to working in tech.
But ive been working with it for 25 years in different roles. Im just tired of seeing the same thing being reinvented again and again under different names.
I dont feel excited about micro services or AI or blockchain. Its just more and more complexity all the time and its exhausting, not interesting.
Also the culture has changed. It used to be a fun profession for figuring out how to write the code to solve something. Now its telling agents what to do, and pressure to always work hard.
It wasnt like that before. The company needed your skills and they couldnt push or replace people very easily. Which meant they treated you well and didnt stress you.
billionaires own the means of communication
Billionaires own PieFed/Lemmy? Damn. Didn’t know that.
Ohhh you mean they own the shitty parts of the Internet? Yeah it’s simple, don’t use them.
I do sometimes, but I always try to recognize that this is EXACTLY how someone trying to bring you down wants you to feel. If basically nobody exists any more that practices and advertises a way that avoids the abuse, then the path will truly become dead until something radically changes. Until that moment, and not a moment later. And tricking you into apathy is just a very effective strategy to accelerate that.
I still remember getting into tech, and just constantly expanding my horizon with new tools and tutorials. Without those, I probably never would have gotten there, and would probably just have been like the rest. Knowing such people are out there looking for that spark, it want them to be able to find it too. Some things you must do without being able to know if it’s working or not.
You are running into the individualistic vs societal issues problem. A big component of fighting back is taking on corporate power via industrial regulation.
& collective revolution
What the hell. How does this help OP who already said that he’s tired of fighting back?
I have been stepping away, but I just love the good parts of tech too much. I still believe in the good it can do for my life and others. I do, like anyone, hate how it’s been monopolized over time by solely profit-driven groups and interests. Unfortunately, that stuff is rewarded by society over genuinely useful applications.
I’ve found a threshold of usefulness with every piece of tech I have. Once I can identify that it’s bullshitting and trying to make itself seem useful through manipulation (ex: Twitter, overpriced subscriptions), that’s when I cut it off. Too many things that manipulate you and try to take your attention or money while providing little in return.
Other stuff like my self hosting solution, game consoles, etc. are set up in ways that are beneficial. It’s not perfect, the AI industry will invade where they can, but I feel fortunate to be in a position where I am aware of ways I can have more control over my tech and therefore can dodge some of the predatory practices. Still though, sometimes I just give up on the endless YouTube videos and read a book instead. Full analog living isn’t the way though.
I’ve found a threshold of usefulness with every piece of tech I have. Once I can identify that it’s bullshitting and trying to make itself seem useful through manipulation (ex: Twitter, overpriced subscriptions), that’s when I cut it off.
That about sums it up. I’m rather selective about what tech I use and am not shy about rejecting garbage.
IT Professional here.
I’ve been ready to burn it all down for about 20 years now.
Whenever I got called for an issue, I would tell the user “eh, just throw it out the window,” and then they would laugh like I was joking or something
Is it a printer? Hold on. I will come help you throw it out the window.
Cool, Maintenance said we can use their appliance dolly if we let em watch
Not completely, but more and more I find peace of mind in analog and offline spaces. Physical books feel better than e-books, a real bike is more fun than a Peleton (cheaper too), and cooking my own food is better than GrubHub.
I have an educational background in IT, but I’ve worked as a mechanic for most of my adult life. I’m a tool using primate. Tech is a tool. If a new tool improves on the old and makes life easier, I use it. If it doesn’t, it’s not worth having around. When your job is fixing things, “ain’t broke, don’t fix it” makes a lot of sense.
I’m not going to bend over backwards for tech that I don’t need just because a rich CEO tells me it’s revolutionary. I can flip a light switch, lock my doors, make a grocery list without the help of an AI fridge, and write my own emails.
The problem comes when there are no more non-AI fridges around and people start mocking you for building your own dumb fridge, you weirdo.
That’s usually how it goes.
The trouble I’d have to go through to build a dumb fridge would bother me more than people talking shit about me building or owning one.
People can talk shit all they want, don’t mean I’m gonna listen.
Technologies are just tools. They are not everything in life nor is the internet the whole world. Use them to do what they help you in meaningful ways. Don’t feel the burden that you have to participate or be dragged into it. Take a break if you need, walk away, and maybe you’ll find out other things that you can grow / develop / worth spending time and energy on.
Reminds me of a joke I heard a few years ago.
The “Tech Enthusiast” : My whole home is rigged up with smart systems! I can control my AC and my lights from my phone from 1,000 miles away!
The Tech Engineer : the most recent piece of equipment I own in my home is a printer from 2003 and I keep a loaded gun next to it in case it makes a noise I don’t recognize.
joke
Ahaha, yep, totally a joke.
Im stuck (deliberately) about the year 2010 ish tech wise… People need automation to turn on a light switch, i long ago figured out how to open my curtains sans alexa as well.
Alas everything enshitifies.
Honestly, I’d rather use dumb tech than the smart tech we were in.
Also, in terms of Linux, self-hosting, and privacy tools, I don’t think it’s futile, but rather, as someone who uses as much FOSS as possible, it is liberating if you control it. For the AI part, I’d just use Ollama and Qwen 3, as much of corporate AI is sloppy.
Not in the slightest.
But, where I used to super interested in cutting-edge tech stuff, I’m now extremely jaded. I used to actively seek out news on new tech companies / projects because it genuinely felt like there were a lot of problems out there to be solved, and tech was solving those problems. These days it seems like tech often is the problem, and it’s never going to be solved because they have the DMCA, Section 230, trillions of dollars, and the entire apparatus of the state ensuring that their shitty tech keeps getting in your way.
The thing is, I still like tech. I can’t imagine living in a world without it. Whenever I see these memes about people wanting to become farmers it amazes me, because farming sucks. I don’t like the great outdoors, the indoors is far greater. I can appreciate non-digital tech. An internal combustion engine is a really cool gadget, for example. And, I’m happy to do my own bike maintenance. But, real world things are greasy, loud, and inelegant. It amazes me when people claim to like record players instead of good quality digital media. It’s amazing how record players work, but they’re still terrible, outdated things that objectively produce a less accurate sound than a good digital file. I still prefer technology, preferably digital technology. I just don’t like the stuff that makes up 95% of the Internet these days.
It sounds like you really feel the same way, because:
get a dumb phone
That’s tech.
a CD player
Also tech.
check out books, movies, music, and games
I’m pretty sure any movies and music you check out from the library in 2025 will be digital, that’s tech.
Have you found ways to reconnect with technology?
If you don’t like it, don’t reconnect. Become a farmer or a fisherman or whatever makes you happy. But, I’m not going to join you. I may be veering a lot more towards DIY tech, and offline things than I used to. But, to get me to abandon technology you’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.
wanting to become farmers it amazes me, because farming sucks
I agree, I think people romanticize it and think of it like gardening. It can be relaxing, therapeutic even, to do some home gardening. Actually becoming a farmer sucks. It’s why a lot of its done by immigrants who don’t have many better options.
Besides, that’s tech now too and it’s also been enshittified. Look at John Deere.
Yeah, I mean, that’s the only part of farming that actually seems interesting to me. It’s not that it makes me want to do it, but I’m curious about tractors using GPS to sow seeds then plow a field. But, John Deere tractors seem even more enshittified than most tech right now.
But, that also emphasizes your other point. To make farming less labour intensive and require less expertise, you can now buy really expensive farming equipment with the latest tech that makes certain aspects of farming easier. But, that equipment is extremely expensive.
Farm work used to be done by slaves. In the US, once slaves were freed, many continued to be farmers because that’s all they knew how to do, and it wasn’t a job that anybody else wanted to do. Now farming has diverged in 2 directions, on one end there’s the (white) farm owner, or upper tier farm worker who owns million-dollar pieces of equipment with all kinds of modern tech. On the other end there are farm workers, who are often illegal immigrants, or at least immigrants on very restricted visas who work the toughest jobs for almost no money. And, both jobs suck.
The suck of the farm worker’s job is obvious. Back breaking labour in terrible weather for almost no pay. It’s a job that nobody with any options would choose to do.
The farm owner’s job sucks too. You’re at the mercy of the weather, and that weather is only getting more unpredictable as the climate changes. You have to invest in extremely expensive equipment just to have a chance, so you might have millions of dollars in assets (harvesters, livestock, land) but your average cashflow is only in the low 6 figures, and in bad years it can be negative. You don’t own your own seeds, you “own” your tractor, but need John Deere’s approval for your own repairs, and you’re kind-of tied to the land.
then idea of the down on his luck farmer is a lie sold to you buy the farm lobby. the overwhelming majority of farmers are multi-millionaires abusing this system to ratfuck public funds the same as everyone else who is rich. they even have their own special class of bankruptcy that lets them protect large chunks of assets and that class of bankruptcy literally only benefits rich farmers.
Not to mention a true farming life is brutal. Those 4am wakeup calls aren’t optional, if you’re truly living off it. Tractor breaks down? Cow’s sick? Want lunch?
You fix it, you kill it, you make it.
Because the non-industrial scale profit margins on farming suck. So you don’t have the money to pay someone for many of the luxuries city folks enjoy. Do it for a year, and you either learn to love the struggle or you quit.
There are some amazing parts of farming. And the life can be incredible. But farmers are ridiculously tough for a reason.
