Hello, welcome to my blog!
In this first post I hope to tell you a bit about myself and what to expect from future posts.
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the algorithms that dictate the content on the internet that I see and what I can do to distance myself from the corporatized web.In the past, I’ve though about building back up my local music library (read, not streaming through Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) and maybe even getting a modded iPod to use as my primary music device.
Every time I start this process, I think about the features and discoverability that I’d be leaving behind. Even though I think that I’d rather be more intentional with my media consumption, and the fact that the streaming service bubble has to pop eventually. I would always quickly come back to my Spotify account because of things like generated custom mixes, and the yearly Spotify Wrapped, which is always a fun time to see everyone’s different music tastes and habits.
“If I don’t use Spotify, my wrapped won’t be as wholly representative of my year and sharing it will be less fun”, I would say to myself.
What got me back on this idea lately has been a combination of a few things.
For one, I’ve been attempting to run desktop Linux as my daily drive. I’ve similarly wanted to get away from Windows for some time, but the AI integration that they’re testing right now was the new push I needed. When it’s working how I want it to, it’s great!
Not having features be so reliant on account logins and online services genuinely makes me feel better about using my PC!
It has been somewhat of a learning curve and there are some things that I don’t know if I will ever be able to make work as well as they do on Windows, but that is all largely overshadowed by the sense of privacy and ownership I feel when using Linux as an alternative.
(I’ve been playing around with Ubuntu and Mint btw, with Ubuntu being my favorite so far specifically because it is so un-Windows with its GUI)
I’m sure you can see the parallels between that and my thoughts about not using Spotify as my primary music source.
The other major inspiration for this change was a video series by the YouTuber, Digging The Greats that begins with him committing to using an iPod exclusively for 30 days but ends up inspiring some major changes to the way that he consumes media going forward.
This is the first part of that series. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou2dW4qebbw
I really liked his way of doing things by the end (I’d really like to read the book he brings up in the last episode), essentially boiling down to being more intentional with his use of the internet and consumption of media.
Now, I’m not planning on fully disconnecting from Spotify or YouTube or anything else, but simply being more intentional with my use of it and having a personal collection of Music ready for the day that Spotify eventually falls.
All of THAT got me thinking about how the web is used by most people and the way that algorithms decide so much of what people see. This lead me to looking into easy ways of starting my own website, and what better way to do that than starting a blog!
I figure these posts will be a kind of media journal for me. While I’m being more intentional about what I play, watch, and listen to, I’ll post here about what I thought about it all.
I watch a lot of online video, some of it being quite good! I think a regular type of post for me would be an internet content digest so I can recommend works and creators that deserve the attention.
Anyway, thanks for reading this far! I’ll update this when I can but I don’t presently have any kind of schedule in mind so just feel free to check back when you remember to.