@cadey has a good point here about social media feeding the lizard brain. I reduced my interactions with certain silos to almost zero just because of this – getting angry all the time sssucks. And while I don’t think that I can do completely without – so detox by deleting is not a solution (for me) – I am fond of social media where I can explicitly choose what is on my stream. And I’m not only talking about the IndieWeb here, that is a huge piece of the puzzle of course, but also about _who_ and _how_ to follow.

For me the trick is to follow people that are fun to read, create own content, post more but just rants, appear to be decent human beings and most important: Don’t feel like a freakin stock photo slideshow (like that Techlore vid xD). The idea is to read and subscribe only to what I really like without expecting someone to follow back just because.

Sometimes following people is not possible without e.g. an account on Facebook though. This is where good old feeds come in again because everything can be bridged or crammed into a feed again. Once it’s only feed I’ve control over where and when to read this and it will be on my own terms. No “recommendations” or ads and – bonus – in chronological order.

There is another reason for _keeping_ a shell account open and that’s for friends stuck elsewhere for whatever reason. I’m privileged knowing my way around tech and I am perfectly aware of this. Others are not or don’t want to invest many hours of their lives into fiddling around with “solutions” that frankly mostly suck or have serious caveats compared to how easy platforms like Facebook or Twitter can be used.

The reason is that friends must be free to choose whatever software and service they want to follow someone.

If this means syndicating content to walled gardens… fine, I’ll jump the hoops and do it. For them. Cuz most of the people I know in this particular example are real people I did meet in meatspace before. Maybe they get tired of the platform in some years too, maybe over time some will follow me into the Fediverse or IndieWeb or just jump on my feed. Maybe they’ll eventually just vanish (or the platforms boot me out 🤷). I may revise this approach once the interactions dry out completely, because this means that everyone I cared about moved on.

Techlore got one point very right though: Scratch the gorram apps. Use a browser. Or even better: A reader. Don’t install tracking and listening software on purpose no matter how “lite” and “fast” they promise the app to be.