Rambles Well Written

(AKA I need to to stop doom scrolling)

WARNING: I get a little vulnerable here in the beginning here. You have been warned.

I’m sure I’ve said something to this effect in the past, even on this very blog. But I think its time I start to re-evalutate my relationship with Tech and the Internet.

2025 has been rough for a few reasons. I can just gesture at “The Horrors” that’s been making me more anxious for months now, when hurt my back by, no joke, coughing funny, and then coughing too hard that hurt it again, fighting with my allergies, and work being… work.

During the summer and most of fall, I got super depressed there for a while. and during that time I was doing a lot of doomscrolling. At home, in public, and in worse in bed! This was especially bad on Youtube Shorts and on Bluesky. With YT Shorts I was mindlessly scrolling through videos for that dopamine hit, and Bluesky I was basically reposting ever anxiety that I was having.

It got so bad that I was laying in bed staring at my phone and saying to myself. “Oh god… I’m going to die with stupid black box in my hand and hardly achieve anything.”

What partially helped me out of this funk was playing DnD with some trusted friends, and help edit two videos for friends one you can watch here: The 5D Chess Experience

Once I had flexed my creativity a bit, I knew that if I wanted to maintain this I had to make a change with my relationship with tech, and what I think the next year’s yearly theme will be: The Year of Ritual or The Year of Touching Grass.

I think I will talk more on that in another post and a video I’ll… probably make at the end of the year. We’ll see. For now I just wanted to write down my thoughts on how I will focus my energy

Limiting time on Social Media (namely bluesky)

I made a post on Bluesky mentioning how I was going have a “Soft Break” from Social Media. I said soft break because I still wanted to repost my friend’s post, and when I finally post a video I wanted to post. This because there were different times this year I was falling for ragebait, getting into long arguments, and reposting WAY TOO MUCH. The latter being really bad during that depression period. If I wasn’t reposting memes, I was reposting outrage, the current news, hot takes. Not only does that make my page a mess, I was fucking miserable dude, and I don’t think those that followed me was much better.

I want to make something very clear. I think it’s valid to be outraged right now. I think it’s valid to be angry, and frustrated, and want things to get better. These are all natural ways to respond to all this. Because it’s all Bullshit. But at some point… you have to step away.

And that’s HARD for me. I’ve always struggled with letting go. But I have to accept I’m not going to change the world by typing on an endless feed of text posts. To put that kind of pressure is only causing more anguish.

The more frustrated I became, the more I would post. I looked deep inside myself and asked. “Am I really making any sort of impact by posting about this stuff?”

It would be one thing it I was volunteer for an organization or even had an audience I could sway, or mobilize with my words. And even then, there are much more productive ways to spend that time and promote change than being part of an online flood of text. The scope’s too big, the reach is too small, and chasing validation from users who might largely be bots. So much effort for little gains.

I’m still passionate about what I believe, and I’ll likely not shut up about caring about the rights of my fellow man, and I’ve invested so much time into electoral reform that I refuse to not still bring it up, but I need to redirect that energy to something that won’t completely drain me.

So I made the decided that I’m going to focus on supporting my friends and trying to take the joy for genuine joy. I can’t support every cause, and ONE MAN cannot change the world. But I can at least try to help my friends not feel as alone, and try to help them get through this time of fuckery.

Also “Joy as Resistance” is a much more helpful phrasing than “Don’t worry about the world, worry about [YOU]” Because it doesn’t dismiss the concerns of people raising them, but recognizes it. Because even if you’re in the thick of it, even you need to recharge if you are able to. Because you can not allow those who wist to do you harm to steal that joy away. Because that nihilism is a slow, and insidious killer that robs you of your energy.

Yes I wanted to write that last bit because “Don’t worry about the world, worry about [YOU]” bothers me to my core anytime I’ve my current anxiety about the world to my boomer parents. Sure this isn’t direct political action, but I’m not pretending that it is.

The Need to Get Over FOMO

Now despite what I just said about helping my friends there’s another side of the coin that I need to address… And that’s been hopping onto just about every discord call.

Listen I love my friends. Both in the flesh and in digital. in fact dare I say they’ve kept me sane for the past 5 years. But I’ve also realized that I can’t spend every day in a discord call and still get thing done

There’s reasons for this that I can psychoanalyze, I don’t want to be in the position where I say something along the lines of “I wished I spent more time with my friends and family.” and due to a personal experience I won’t get into, I get worried about what would happen if I gave hanging out a pass. I have tendency to want to spend as much time with friends and family despite being an introvert.

But also… I have video I want to make, and responsibilities I need to take care of. I think in need to remind myself that so long as I’m not constantly turning down my friends for discord calls, or meet ups with my local* friends, I’ll always have another chance to join in. Balance is sort of key here.

This is also ironic when I am writing this up after having lovely discord call with said friends lol.

*and by local I mean… Near the GTA haha.

Playlists on Youtube – To Combat Decisions Paralysis

There’s many things that I need to do with my relationship to YouTube as a source of entertainment. One of the main ones is making playlists of songs for when I’m doing chores or other work that requires low concentration. I have tendency to go to the music recommendations and get hit with decision paralysis and I find the YouTube mixes to be not great. I need less time trying to figure out what I want to listen to and more time doing what I need to do. The easiest way is for me to just make a big playlist of all the songs I would typically listen to, and then just shuffle when I need to.

Now another approach would be to go old school and rip all my music, and make a local playlist of songs on my phone and computers. Maybe even be a little extra and make a self-hosted streaming service for myself and family or at least synced up with syncthing. But that’s a work in progress.

Forums – To Fight Social Media’s Pull

Before the centralized social media being the main hubs for communication on the web, there were BBSes/forums. Technically there still are plenty of forums, but they seem to be less used now a days when social media and messaging platforms dominate this space.

What I’m finding now with Social Media is that everything is optimized for doing big numbers, whether it be views, likes, or replies. All optimized for some uncaring algorithm. And it’s all effectively one big feed (filtered for you habits) to keep you on as long as possible. Good for consumption, not so much for communications.

Sure discord servers are an option, and I’m part of a handful, but they are first and foremost a messaging platform first, so it feels as though it needs to be an imminent response. Discord servers can be HUGE, and I struggle to keep up with them. Plus you still have the issue that discord is a centralized service which has its own problems. Forums are a lot slower, often focused on their niche or community, fairly smaller, and are run and hosted independently from some centralized company.

Ultimately that is why I decided to join a handful in the hopes to have generally better conversations than what I’ve gotten from bluesky, and twitter besides friends.

There are currently 4 that I am apart of which aligned with my interest:

Johto Times – A forums for a Pokemon Fan Zine

Demodisc – Addie/Epos Vox’s Forum

Accursed Farms – Ross Scott’s Forum for his Channel

Frutiger Aero Archive – Forum for a site that documents aesthetics around the 2000s-2010s

If anyone has a some recommendations I’ll happily take a look. :)

RSS – To Fight Some Temptations

I’ve talked about rss before. To be honest that article probably needs updating. Basically before people started following everyone else of social media pages, RSS would be one way to receive website updates. Many sites still have them such as for the news, but even youtube channels can be follow this way.

The reason for this is so I’m not relying on social media for most of my news, and to follow channels that might infrequently upload or I have a high chance of missing their content. I also wouldn’t mind following some more thoughtful blogs and web comics too!

Discipline and Awareness – Breaking Habits is Hard

Naturally, I could do all the replacement in the world. Yes, it’s bad to eat a full tub of ice cream in one sitting, but eating a whole bunch of grapes would yield similar effects. … At least with my stomach intolerant ass. Idk why that is.

It’s easy to slip back into just scrolling on my phone, or go down rabbit holes. There are 3 main ways I can go about trying to resist this:

1. Discipline Myself

“Just don’t do it bro” as said easier said than done. But if I don’t start off with me trying to intentionally get better about my use of the internet, and technology then… Well… Why am I writing this?

I have to try to resist the urge to fall into a habit of the doomscroll, or reply to outrage, or feed into my anxiety. Being mindful and trying to get myself to do other things is the whole point of this change.

2. Catching Myself

When that fails I need to train myself to be aware when I’m doing this. I’m mostly calling myself out for when I’m scrolling on YT shorts endlessly. When I’m in this state it is up for me to recognize what I am doing and then go to do. Something else. Whether that be working on the video, playing a game or even watching a movie.

To quote myself in that bluesky thread, literally is more productive for me to do anything else than be scrolling aimlessly on text or vertical video apps. Better I get up and do something else.

3. Rituals in Routine

This came up on a video by Epos Vox on his Lost Saves channel talking about Routines and Rituals. I highly suggest anyone who’s been struggling finding a spark in their adult life to give it watch. It’s very insightful.

If think its best that I try finding a little routine for myself. Not sure how that will look considering my work weeks look more like two weeks (long story), and I work on a rotation. However, I think it is becoming important that I have a “movie night” or a “go to store day.” Like I still need to watch the original Trigun guys. I’ve joked about this before but you’d be surprised how helpful it is to go outside guys. and interact with people? and have it be a good experience?! wild.

I’ll probably speak more to this in the “Yearly Theme” post I’ll make later. I will say I’ve tried to be more spontaneous in my adult hood, and while it kind of is the best way to be with my schedule, it’s felt aimless lately. I might als need dedicated days where I work on something for even 1-2 hours on my off days.

Will I Succeed Where I’ve Failed Before?

This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to do something like this. After all… look how dead this blog has been for. I always get this burst of needing or wanting to do something to this effect, and then slip back into some pretty bad habits. RSS is something I keep forgetting to use as an example.

I don’t think there’s any magic change this time around either tbh. Just that I’m older, more tired, disillusioned with social media, needing that human connection again, needed to fight atomization of the human experience, not wanting to be as solitary anymore.

I am not going to make a declarative “This time will be different.” I’m fighting against years of habits I’ve accumulated for 20+ years. But, it is important that I try. That I be mindful of this. That make the effort. That rebel not only against my habits, but the corpos that want to rob me of all my attention and joy.

It is my life. I need to take back the agency for it.

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A Nemes Content Blog 2022.