overhaul
I'm in the process of overhauling my entire approach to being online, and I like how it's going so far. This is about joining Bear but also more than that.
I guess I am finally (finally!) getting around to dealing with a fear that I had over a decade ago, namely that all the things that made the internet great were slowly being corrupted or straight up destroyed by the corporatization of the internet and the internet experience itself. The new thing was pretty and shiny, but there was nothing but emptiness at its core, but hey, at least everyone got to be a brand and watch a handful of their close friends and family members get red pilled and lose their minds.
I was stupid and I took them at their word. I didn't realize we were all rats in a maze until it was too late and when I finally did, the stark reality was that a critical mass of social media users were on the big corporate platforms, so it only made sense for me (and many others) to be there (for a variety of reasons).
When I finally wised up, I knew I had to dig down to the roots and take as much as I could away from the apex predator companies and plant it somewhere else. Joining Bear is part of that. Joining Micro.blog and Bluesky is part of that. Moving from Gmail/Google Workspace to Proton is part of that.
Anyway, no one asked and I'm basically yelling into the void, here, but I thought it was worthwhile to express in a way that let the other Bear folks know a little bit about who I am and why I'm here.