Comment by globular-toast

>Many books to read and places to go

You cannot travel into the US without providing access to your Social Media accounts. Pretty likely you get denied if you say "I don't have social media".

> consider the internet dead and move on. It's nothing like it was 20 years ago anyway. There are other things to do. Many books to read and places to go. We had something really cool and we were lucky to experience it while it lasted, but it's gone now.

I'm pretty much at this stage too. The web/internet was a frontier like the Wild West. But those wild days are gone and are never coming back. Cyberspace has been settled.

It’s hard to feel any enthusiasm for democracy watching things you disagree with being pushed through and having no power to stop it. I signed the petition to reverse the OSA and all we got was a canned response.

I’ve come to the conclusion the only thing you can really do is leave when you disagree with the direction of your country, but of course not everyone has the ability to do that.

Depends on your MP. I have received surprisingly detailed responses to some of my past letters.

If they can't be arsed to answer you, then you shouldn't be arsed to vote for them, at least in my opinion.

> We had something really cool and we were lucky to experience it while it lasted, but it's gone now.

You can also recreate a smaller network and enjoy it as a silo, disconnected from the Internet, at times.

There's no need to be off the grid 24/7 to feel the relief.

It's deeply relaxing to pull the (Internet) plug (I do, literally, physically remove one ethernet cable from a switch right underneath my monitor and I've then got several machines happily communicating only on the LAN: no more Internet).

Maybe I'm having fun with my latest acquisition: modelling parts to fix stuff left and right around the house by 3D printing them (I bought a 3D printer for that: I had many things I needed to fix and I knew I'd be able to fix them properly by printing adequate parts). No need for the Internet to model, slice and 3D print.

Such an activity does feel like the computing of yore: it takes me back to a time when it was me and a 8-bit machine. Creating stuff "by code" (which now take physical form at home, which 11-years old me would have find utterly mindboggling btw).

> There are other things to do. Many books to read and places to go.

And hobbies. As a kid from the eighties I love cars from the late 80s/very early 90s: not much electronics, not spying on you. Sure they're a bit of gaz guzzlers but then half the fun is fixing stuff on them and the other half is talking about them with other enthusiasts: there's no need to drive 10 000 kilometers a year with those.

When you take time to disconnect a bit from the Internet, then I'd say when you're online (like I'm now) it all feels way more tolerable.

No need to go full luddite IMO but YMMV.