It's a thumbs down from me
The first month of 2025 was… a lot. The holidays had already been quite stressful and so the year didn’t start on a great note. Shortly after, I developed an injury on my dominant hand — De Quervain tenosynovitis, also known as gamer’s thumb. I also got the flu, though thanks to the flu shot I got last year it passed quickly, I still feel like it affected me. Then finally the emotional drain from everything happening in the world, and, well. I haven’t been able to do much of anything the past weeks.
Thankfully I have a whole bag of cognitive behavioral tools from therapy, so I’m managing — slowly getting back to work, not doing too much, not doing too little — but it’s very frustrating because I want to do much more than I can do.
In the midst of all this I also decided to move away from Meta, leaving Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which in retrospect maybe wasn’t the best idea to do when I’m in the middle of an injury and mental struggle and need support. I just… I can’t stomach to be on those platforms anymore knowing what the company stands for and the direction they took. Honestly it’s something I should have done years ago.
a still from the BTS music video ‘Spring Day’ featuring a motel called Omelas in bright neon letters, a reference to Ursula K. Le Guin’s ‘Those Who Walk Away from Omelas’.
In many ways I feel like I’m in a storm, trying to put one foot in front of the other, hunkering down, trying to make it through. But as my wrist is slowly healing, the storm outside is gathering speed. It’s a small comfort that many others feel the same way. More than anything, it’s so draining, because I’m so angry. Angry at everything being taken from us: decades of internet history and community, to make room for hate, fear, and a seemingly endless deluge of AI slop. It’s difficult to even be eloquent about it. We can find a new home on the Fediverse, perhaps. But that doesn’t change what was lost.
I have a lot of thoughts that for now, haven’t fully crystallized. The significance of building human things with human hands, and how AI seeping into all of our content may be affecting us already in ways we aren’t aware of; our sense of reality tilting ever so slightly sideways because we are reading and seeing things that are artificially generated, everything just a little bit off. The significance of art made by people since it expresses the human experience, something that can never be replaced by an automation. How much those in power are profiting from keeping people ignorant and afraid, and how much they have already succeeded.
The 2022 commencement speech by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker at the USA Northwestern University seems more relevant than ever (though I am not a fan of how he uses the word ‘idiot’)
“When we see someone who doesn't look like us, or sound like us, or act like us, or love like us, or live like us—the first thought that crosses almost everyone's brain is rooted in either fear or judgement or both. That's evolution. We survived as a species by being suspicious of things we aren't familiar with. (…) In order to be kind, we have to shut down that animal instinct and force our brain to travel a different pathway. Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being.”
For now, I need to focus on healing my injury, and getting my energy back; that means taking plenty of rest, and stopping myself from doomscrolling or spiraling into nihilism. There are plenty of good people out there doing good things, and I hope to count myself among them.
I leave you with a referral to this article, which has opened my eyes and was the last push I needed to get away from Meta: The Slop Society by Edward Zitron.