How Far Can One Go?
Happy Halloween Everyone! Today is another day, and I have some super fun events planned. I have been hyperfixating on electronic tech removal lately. The last major focus was changing my sleeping and eating windows to 10am-6pm and 6am-10pm, yet that has fallen off. Now, I using my phone super-less and my MacBook Neo not at all. I want to change the way I interact with the internet. For one, I am now Anti-Apple. I know that they have done an amazing time. Apple was amazing. I loved them. I gave them another shot March-Now 2026. I just know that with Siri AI, how easy it is to distract myself on their phones, I just can’t. I don’t have the will, not to access instagram or to redownload instagram on their phones. I am now using a graphene OS phone, with limited apps, only 8 apps! I have SMS, Signal, Phone, Settings, Waze, Camera, Contacts, Files. I removed some key apps, like my habit tracker and calendar. I figured that, I don’t want ANY excuse to use my phone. My only excuse now, is for phone calls, texts, gps. Maybe I will use Signal for video calls, as my “facetime”. I am writing this on my MacBook Air 11 Inch, running debian with dwm. It’s super minimalist. I am using vim through ranger to write this all out. I enjoy the experience. I know that my words will be going online, to the internet, and that anyone could read them. My thoughts are out there, all on my own site. It’s not a maze of different social media platforms. You’ve gotta look at it from my perspective. These social media companies are evil, they want to advertise and control our purchases whether they be tangiable goods, or political leaders. It’s also way more over head to be posting thoughts to 15 different sites. It’s shallow. With one site, I have far more depth. Sure, I have a ton of work to do when it comes to grammar, sentence structure and spelling. I would rather have those flaws! It’s a flex in 2026 to put out REAL content, with where I am really at. If I posted a AI summary of my thoughts, it would be shallow. It wouldn’t be ME!
Currently, I am accessing the internet for groups in my area, banking, and work. Besides that, I really have no interest. If I could find writings online, like my own writings, I would download those writings to my kindle, and read them off my kindle. That would be really cool! To have friends and family members who have their own blog that I could peer into. It’s healthier! If I could read my friends writings, I could really peer into who they are. Instead, at most I would have to download 5 social media apps, and socialize with them in a weird way. I would say, personal internet websites is the way out when it comes to social media. The internet is not designed in that way though. It’s cool, that if someone searches my name, they will find all my writings day by day. I wouldn’t be searching up my friends names though, hoping for a site like this, as I assume they are all on social media. SO my website is more-so for myself, I want a record of my thoughts online. This also allows for the practice of writing, where social media only allows for small posts with small word counts. I could write as much as I wanted to! It adds to depth to my personality.
Could I Quit Completely?
Honestly, it’s more possible than I think right now. I could easily quit using web-browsers for good. That part is easy. I already have access to the banking sites, I have the urls. I could go through, and delete accounts with the wild amount of accounts made over the years.
I have tons of books downloaded on my calibre. If I am feeling un-stimulated, I can read from those books. I have my kindle, to read on as well. The problem? I’ve been trained to search and google the problems I have in my life. Constantly, searching, searching, and searching. Here’s an example. I may want to quit texting. Then I have the anxiety, is it possible to do that? Let’s say I got a flip-phone without texting, the people in my life would adapt. I am choosing not to do that for now, as I don’t want to run out and buy another phone. I have already made the phone super minimalist. It’s only my lack of will I am scared of, if I have a smart phone my fears of returning the past life. So I have also decided to keep my phone in the bathroom while I am home. When I am going to a different location, it will be in my car mound. It has TWO locations, bathroom and car. It doesn’t go in my pocket. That helps with some of those anxieties, because in a perfect world, I would have a GPS in my car separate from my phone, use phone, email and mail only.
That’s the part that is hilarious once you get off this stuff. Instagram has it’s own DM feature. Facebook has it’s own messenger, Snapchat, TikTok, the list goes on. Dating apps, if you’ve got the big three. Obviously I made it more difficult to use, as I disabled notifications, so I constantly went into each app to see if I got messages. I ‘broke’ the way the technology was supposed to be used. Obviously, people would just keep notifications on, and not worry about it, until a message came up. I broke the pattern by disabling notifications. I would like to keep it far in the distance, I realized yesterday I could check texts individually. For example, I had a question to ask about volunteering, so I individually went into contacts and talked to that person. I did the same when asking my father about work. That way, I am not doomscrolling the SMS or Signal feeds. I know today I will have in person social interactions, that’s good enough for me. I have this whole website to map out my thoughts, and I don’t need to constantly text or message people in the meantime.
I would love to use email more. The simple fact? People prefer texting. If I wanted to something similar, I should send hand written letters. Actually let’s map out the places I send messages. a) my website b) my journals/physical handwriting c) texting and signal d)emails (sparingly)
All of this was written as I am super anxious in some respects. Like, “what if I miss someone trying to contact me!” If someone REALLY needs to contact me, THEY WILL CALL ME. It also says something about me too. My fears of phone calls. Gen Z has a phone-phobic mental, it’s not healthy. Phone calls have been scientifically proven to help with social skills and mental health more than texting or instant messenger. It’s also the context, Bonding with people over text messages, it’s an active thing. Where email or mail is more depth and slower.
There’s really nothing great about the internet
Once realize this, it’s easy to detach. I would rather be stuck with a problem, than chase for the answer online. My socialization is with those parameters I set for myself. I still am getting myself out there on the web, I am just not using the technology it’s self. During the last 30 minutes, I have just been hammering away at this keyboard. While it is a LCD screen, it’s just words of text. I would be AMAZING if this screen was E-INK, the tech just isn’t there yet for the smoothness, and if E-INK did get there, how would it be any different than LCD? So I decided, to only use FireFox with Arkenfox Extension. I am deleting the brave browser off this machine. With brave, I just started to bookmark tons and tons of links, I got the cloud service going, I ended up having like 10 different devices all running brave browser cloud sync. Now I am in a place where I don’t want to use the internet at all. Realistically, I don’t even have to check my website all the time. I can just log in via w3m. Once I get my RSS feeds and email setup through those services, I can REALLY ditch firefox. My banking stuff? I can have it be more automated. As long as I am not spending like a mad man on credit cards, it can be automated. Maybe Venmo and Paypal i’ll have to log in to from time to time. Probably login for eBay and work.
Now obviously this is just the internet piece. My interaction with it goes as far as this, and requirements for living. The laptop I am using right now still isn’t perfect to be my everything machine quite yet. I would have to bulk it up a bit for it to be used for my photography or file storage. I still know I can be more minimalist in this regard too!! I’m telling myself, 90% of things I think I need, I don’t. I can live off reading and writing, exercising, socializing. There’s so much there already. I don’t need video games. I don’t need movies. I don’t need to have 90,0000 photos. I don’t need an archive of every little thing. I need an archive of the important stuff (important reading), important people in my life who bring joy, important activities that feed into my soul. XO everyone have a nice halloween.
Best,
Aidan Hellrigel