I stopped letting social media, social pressure and bad games & software affect me with this one simple trick!

Published on August 28, 2026

For a lot of people, they usually have an account for almost anything under the sun. There is a small demographic that might only limit themselves to a small range, such as SpaceHey + Steam + Instagram. That's okay, people do what they like to do.

However, as somebody who has been increasingly intolerant of my options not being satisfying or being massive compromises (in a time where I can't afford to compromise yet), I am not at the point of going anywhere just yet.

So instead, I have opted to be overly confident and rejective of accounts I make in places where I chat with people. Because abandoning social media in a blink, to me, is very easy.

Hear me out, I swear this is going to be informative.

I don't "owe" my time to platforms

This is the opposite of the global consensus, where you must sink all of your time in one platform at all costs, either because you're most comfortable using it, or because you have a long history with your friends over it. However, in a world that is globally opting in to Identity Collection(tm) with no opt out and slowly destroying platforms and utilities by monetizing features that lured in users, I have taken a more... radical approach.

I am very critical of the platforms I am on. I will limit my exposure to people if I feel it will limit me socially, leading me to cut off communities if I feel it (in a nice, polite way) not worth my time, and might burn me out before I see any benefits.

For example, in the Minecraft server space, I'll stick it out for a while. Assuming the first vibe checks are okay, we'll fight at it until burnout hits me, or such. However, if you have chat reports on, I consider that not worth my time and you will never see me again, because all the risks far outweigh the benefits. A false ban, or losing access to a game I care a lot about outweighs the social and entertainment benefit, for me. So, bye bye.

I apply this logic to my social media presence too, because I'm tired of the modern internet taking its hold. I am practically socially isolating myself by being a radicalist leaves Instagram, just because I think Discord is important to me and a better platform chat wise. However, I do that anyway because I look at people who don't, and think that I need to be the 1%.

I can be very extremist about my take on Social Media. I handle things as though they accommodate me and only me. However, I always aim to be polite, because it should be a human right to handle social interactions with potential friends. But that doesn't mean I can't draw boundaries where I want and need it!

Of course, when it comes to reviews and making clear my opinions, that can be a little different sometimes, but at that point, "extremist" implies something I am not. "Loud and out there" is more appropriate... maybe a little vulgar on accident. I have tone control problems, sorry!

This is a bit of an obvious statement considering quarantine has changed how everybody interacts, but it's true!

Socially interacting with people has changed in the past six years. We can amount this to covid having literally taken people by storm and having basically revolutionized the internet when that was all we could afford to do. And that changed a lot of people, for better or for worse.

However, it did also mark a time of change for many people. Like many others, I sought to the Internet for socializing more frequently when it was time to shut all the doors to the home. And while it did give me friends that I barely have anymore but appreciated very much, it also made me a little more awkward, and more shut-in on myself.

And that changed all of our abilities to socialize, whether for better or for worse. But at least we haven't completely lost it!

Socially interacting as an autistic person is harder than you think it is

But, here is the thing. Social struggles for me is a much different matter than the social struggles for everybody else looks like. Stop me if you've heard this before.

A lot of people like to complain about how different people are at socializing nowadays. People operate much differently nowadays, maybe they stick with their friends and don't point their heads outwards. Maybe people have become more selective with who they deem their friends, or just maybe people.

Well, I asked some people! And among some of the opinions, social media (what a surprise...) and forced circumstances come to mind. The internet has encouraged people to objectively be meaner than in person (since they can get away with it easier), and sometimes you are 'forced' into friendships you don't entirely want to be in. Because, you're around them a lot, so the friendship is kinda sometimes 'forced'. I've been in my fair share before!

Okay, so we have a small size for some motivations on why socializing is hard for people. However, I am Autistic and don't quite see socializing the same way that others do. So let's put on the magnifying glass for a little bit.

Socializing as a shut in, is hard. I find that socializing takes 'effort' from me, it's not just something I can do naturally. Sure, I can do it without thinking about it, but it takes a lot of energy from me. It takes a lot of will. Digitally, it puts strain on my hands, and in person it puts strain on my throat. Literally, it puts a weight on my motivation.

So socializing, quite literally, drains me pretty fast. I could respond to people and socialize with people I'm unfamiliar with, for about maybe a few times. Then I'll just want to move on already, and I'll lose that train. Or I can force it, and the quality of my messages can go down a little.

This adds up with autistic people learning and developing a little differently. So, I'm quite literally not on par with people who are developed, not autistic and have far better social skills. It is called a learning disability for a reason.

And social media comes into play with this, because Social Media just looks like a foreign demon. It's exponentially harder for me to make friends over it, because as I see it, it's like a blog. It's where I showcase a bit of myself and talk a lot about myself, in a way that anybody can view it, not just my friends.

But then, it tends to feel like I'm not making any social progress. I get a bit of engagement and people correcting and dropping their opinions on matters, sure. But it doesn't feel like I'm getting closer to having a friend. It feels more like I'm interacting with somebody who is curious about my work. It's like YouTube, not SpaceHey. You casually interact with your followers, not make friends through interactions and private message followups.

And that sucks. Twitter feels like I have followers I interact with, not living people that I'm getting to know. And that's kind of why I was drawn away from places like that.

And holy shit, the social pressure is insane.

There is probably a study out there that confirms what I'm speculating here, but if not, let me just repeat what my brain is telling me: social media is actively being used as what you could technically say, is blackmail at worst and a peer pressure vehicle at best!

Like genuinely, a good small percent of peer pressure comes from platforms like Instagram and Snapchat. People turn into monsters over it, even if a majority of people are pretty nice about it. Who the hell wants to be socially pressured into being forced to keep up a 'snap streak' when they don't even give a shit about photography? I don't, but some people seemingly do.

Like, I don't mean to be mean to people who enjoy this... I understand that Snapchat is a big platform, and some of its features encourage so much fun socializing! But for somebody like me, it just does not work out no matter how you add the math.

Let's use some fiction to explore what social pressure could look like. This isn't how people normally look, but it's the easiest way to explain this, so... Please trust me on this!

So, you know a Bethany. She is a potential friend you could make, and she's one of the people you know in person. By some magic witchcraft, you get a way to talk to her. You exchange a social, maybe a phone number?

Then she tells you that she's more active on Instagram. So you add her on Instagram, you talk a little, and she sends you reels all the time. You say nothing about them, you don't care about reels, right? She also likes to talk a lot about herself, and sends you some of her posts about her vacations and such.

Then in a couple of days, she's gone because you didn't reply to her reels and didn't respond to her posts very often.

Do you understand how this can happen in real life yet?

We are isolating people

No really, this is how isolation begins. If you want to be friends with trendy folk, you have get on the 'trendy' social media. Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat... It's like an unholy trinity at this point.

But then, you also have to deal with the fads that are on those socials. Sending reels back and forth, snap streaks, overly basic chat features with no fancy eye candy or anything on platforms like Discord...

And if you can't fit that mold, then your social media preferences doesn't align with the majority, and you get left in the dust. Simple as that.

Bullshit like this creates a social rift between people, and separates the nerds from the hip. That's not very cool, is it? Social media is not THAT good, is it?

Well, apparently it is, because Instagram and Snapchat have massive followings, and a lot of younger people use them on the daily. It was a popular choice when I was still in middle school (spoiler alert: not that long ago), and even now it seems that it's quite as common. Though, I notice that Instagram has dominated, while Snapchat is seemingly losing a bit of attention.

In general, social media was not really meant to be used as a reason to leverage your social life over others... Yet, when people focus on the engagement part of social media rather than the socializing, it just puts a lot of people into a social trap.

I'm really sorry, but when I think of friends on social media, I don't care about watching what I'm sent. I watch what I think is interesting, and if something is not interesting, I just don't watch what I think I wouldn't like.

And I don't do that, because I don't like reels, or anything. I do that because when I talk to people over social media, I care more about the person behind the screen, not the content they make! And when they make their everything about their posts, or their snap streaks, I feel like I'm not getting to know a person.

I was never one that cared about selfies. I cared about people! I always felt isolated when people my age seemed to care a lot about sending TikToks and reels back and forth, exchanging selfies... Yet, I didn't care about any of that.

Is that weird of me?

So, we have a problem. Social media is a big problem that may increase peer pressure (not scientifically backed), impacts people's ability to socialize, has disrupted the balance of socializing... It seems, well, weird.

Isn't it weird? We have all these social pressures on a bunch of the wrong features. In my opinion (which should not be taken as scientific or absolutely correct), we spend too much time focusing on addictive features that encourage engagement for all the wrong reasons. It's artificial engagement that leads to nothing. No meaningful social interactions, no potential friend making.

Just hitting a button, and sending your whole friend list a picture of your ceiling. Followed by socially isolating whoever doesn't do the same.

This is a very extreme and watered down of version... This is by no means encouraging you to abandon Instagram or Snapchat, because there is really valid reasons to use it! Many people prefer Instagram because it's simple and comes with the added bonus, Snapchat is private and deletes messages over time. This isn't a post about pushing people away from those.

It's just that I notice these trends in SOME people who use it, and it makes engaging with people over them painful, annoying, and isolative.

So, there's our problem. Modern social media is isolating.

Now if only we have a solution that was simple, reduced the amount of work I had to put into using a bunch of accounts, gave me more control over what I actually WANTED to use, technically allowed me to justify it morally and reduced my internet footpri-

Yeah, it's not really any rocket science. In short, the trick is to not use Instagram in the first place. It doesn't work for everybody. But, this is my post and it talks about my personal experience, so hear me out.

YES, this is a horrible idea in retrospect and locks you out of many friendships. Just not having an Instagram account ALONE probably limits a good majority of people from being in contact with you, especially the people who only use SpaceHey and some other generic accounts at once... Those people would have probably been inactive on SpaceHey anyway, I suppose.

Yeah, this limits my opportunities and pretty much isolates me from people any further. But it also keeps me less bound to these places, so I guess there's also a good side to it.

A platform that I don't have a reason to actively use, is dead to me

Look, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it... I don't have the time in my life to regularly log into and maintain friendships on more than like, two apps. Every app adds another permanent tab to my browser, requires me to learn and be aware of their downsides, and potentially may reduce the information I can convey to people.

Sure, having Instagram would make it easier to maintain contact with a few select people. And maybe to some very small degree make it possible to consume more content. But that content not only is a form of it I hate to death and are looking for ways to detox from (more on that later), but when people seem to send them more than send me actual messages wanting to know how I'm doing, maybe to yap about what I like... It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and wastes some of my time.

That's some time I could spend doing my chores. Or maybe doing something I like. Instead, I should spend it by opening a social media app or website that realistically is only used by about two people who insist on using either it or nothing? It's not really worth it at that stage.

Everything is PC toxic for no reason

You can apply this to almost everything, by the way. I'd love to yap about it, but this isn't a rant, so let me rapid fire.

Snapchat has no PC equivalent (that's practical or any good), terminally tracks me everywhere (making it HORRIBLE for online friends to have) and has no opt-out to messages being removed (and it's workaround is unintuitive and it's a poor excuse that doesn't cover up its other problems either), Instagram has reels, is infamous for LGBT toxicity (last i heard) and some of the worst PC instant messaging I've ever used, TikTok doesn't work well on PC and its users are cancerous commenters, Twitter (fuck elon) and Bluesky are split communities of either conversatives, toxic freaks or corporations that can't be bothered to make a better form of keeping up, Mastodon is much better as a private server rather than a public social media...

Notice how at least HALF of my examples include "horrible PC support". This, alone, makes up 90% of my beef with these platforms. Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are some of the worst offenders of Phone addiction, and the fact that my flavor of addiction is not covered is insane. Who the fuck wants to be a mobile gamer?

I can say there are some people that deserve to be mobile gamers, and they're valid examples... But who the hell wants to be a permanent mobile gamer? Most mobile gamers pray for a better PC (or one at all), not to make a living off playing Crossy Road for TikTok. Not for a Grand Theft Auto 6 port that is as feature complete as PC.

Not to mention a phone makes a HORRIBLE computing devi-

Other benefits of this fucked up model

Before I be extremely honest, let's settle for a "little" honest and wrap up some more points that this technically saved on. So far, we have cut out unnecessary platforms and saved some time in the process, partially stopped supporting the Mobile takeover, and maybe lost a few friends.

But that's not all! It keeps my core account list simpler, without all the junk. It's less effort to maintain a SpaceHey, a Discord and a private Mastodon than it is to maintain that, and a million other platforms. Less work, less exposure, less tress of missing posts.

This also has the side effect of filtering out anybody I probably would have struggled to socialize with. That sounds neat because it saves more time, however it does also filter some people who probably would have loved to be my friend and had valid reasons to avoid platforms I can't. ...Yikes?

Not to mention in the age of platforms that are hard to boycott and always pull its users back in... I skip half of the work by just not using it in the first place.

Snapchat was revealed to be doing nothing against stalkers? I already struggled to turn it off, so I never bothered. TikTok mass censoring stupid things that the US government want to censor? Uhhh sorry chief, you made the crisis I'm actively trying to avoid. Meta is collecting my data? Deleted my Facebook account a long time ago. (note: i'm aware this is not a flawess argument, thank you, that's not the point)

Disclaimer: Yes, you should not do this unless you're prepared for the side effect.

Okay, I can hear the alarms ringing, please let me be serious for real now.

YES, this is a horrible idea in practice, and in the real world. If you try this yourself, you are pretty much cutting off the slab of whoever is on the other end. Be it your friends who are sucked into the sensationalism of using their phone, people who LOVE how instagram works and hates how Discord operates, people who are actively boycotting Discord for fair reasons, etc.

All following in my steps does, is isolate you from any friends you have, and probably makes you look really stupid. So maybe, if you care about your social life, please do not try this at home!!!

The reason I've made this post is not because I want to shame people, or even to rant about these platforms. I've just sort of behaved in a weird way and have minimized some of the pain of making friends this way. And with all it's side effects, it was the less stressful option to me than to suffer all the mismanagement. Because I'm a neat freak.

So, maybe do take some of this with a grain of salt. Yeah, it sounds awesome to fuck the system. But some people weren't really meant to fight the system. So go easy on whoever doesn't like this ideology. Really.

And maybe be responsible, guys.

The flip model: it's a gift and a curse

Okay, well, let's look into this little fucked up way of thinking. Let's call this little concept, the survival model. You only try to exist on platforms you need to "survive" socially, not platforms that are more supplement and you could live without. You know, social essentials compared to the candy. Plus, I don't consume video content if it's not on YouTube or a show watching site anyway.

This is where we'll go off the rails from isolating Social Media, and addressing why I'm stuck in this position. Bear with me.

Yeah, there is some fat. I use last.fm and Backloggd and I neglect those platforms sometimes. They're not essential for my social life, but I consider them more a presentation of who I am, not a social media. They show the person I am, not allow you to socialize. So by loopholes, we'll pretend those don't exist for now.

The only real "non essential" social platform I use is RateYourMusic... And while I don't use it for socializing, I probably could if I wanted to. Though I choose not to, because that's not why I use RateYourMusic. Believe me, if somebody made a better alternative I'd be there by now. Album Of The Year doesn't have all the features RYM has (by looking anyway), and doesn't actually fix the problem RYM has in my mind: total privacy and control

Okay, but the actual flip side

Well, that's not very on topic! The topic is square in the face: what are the positives of this?

Well, despite there seemingly not like there would be many... There kind of are. You know earth's population? Not the exact number, but like, the fact there's 8 billion of us? That maybe 30% of those people would be around our age and generation?

Technically, there's maybe upwards of millions of people you could meet in that range. So if in practice, you've shut out about 30 people, some of those are probably people you never would have added anyway. Yeah, it's cruel, but the point is that there's millions of people. The population of the planet is big enough, that the stress is not usually worth it. There's too many people you could meet to be anywhere NEAR stressing how alone it feels.

It's more of a platform population issue, than anything about loneliness... Maybe only a portion of those will really sink a lot of their time online. And when you consider the divide that websites will naturally create, there's probably just some people out there that didn't even know you existed. And you might not see those people until far later, when you try new things.

There's people waiting to be found. Maybe there's just a website filled with these kinds of people, that we haven't discovered yet. But hey, we'll reflect on that another day.

The curse end of the stick

Oh, but one problem... This creates a huge expectation of platforms.

SpaceHey is not very replacable (and it's out of everybody's control)

Okay, well maybe if you want to replace SpaceHey any time soon, that's not as big of a deal. I mean, my expections for SpaceHey pretty much are: "have more than a thousand users, have a community that actually notices people every once and a while, have the very basic essentials of bulletins, profile, blog and chat working even in a basic state". Like, I don't really expect much of SpaceHey anymore considering most features are pretty intimidating.

This will be different to some of you, so your demands might even be bigger than mine. But at the basic state, I want the tools to put myself out there and tell people why I exist. That's it.

There are many alternatives to SpaceHey that do work this way, however they range from being feature complete and underutilized, to... Well, quite frankly dogshit. Most of it stems from the fact that SpaceHey is a giant, so it's literally out of their control. Though in FriendRewind's case, they deserve a lot less than a section talking about them.

Discord is the same boat

You know what doesn't have low expectations for being replaced? DISCORD.

Holy fucking shit, I never thought it could be so fucking hard to get Discord right. For reference, here is the list of ideal features a Discord alternative should have for me to switch over from it: - Functional profiles. They must have at minimum have: a profile image with reasonable upload requirements (this interpretation is up to you; it can exclude gifs if needed), either a bio + pronouns combo, or a long bio, a customizable username (if usernames are overly strict, display names must be included), and a status - All basic chat functions MUST work. I must be able to send and receive messages with their history preserved for years at minimum, with functional replies and any markdown-like formatting. Reactions, polls and read indicators are optional - Basic voice chat must be present, with streaming support. I must be able to at minimum mute myself and others, deafen myself. Voice channel statuses are optional. Streaming would be ideal, but might be fine with workarounds - Basic status states. At minimum must have online and away. A mode with no notifications would be best, even better if you can be online with no notifications - Optionally, an account switcher would be gold - IDEALLY BUT NOT REQUIRED: An existing, or potential plugin system that can expand the website or app with additional features. E.g. adds timezone displays for users, themes for the app, showing the active platform of a user etc. THIS MUST BE FREE. - IT MUST HAVE A DESKTOP APP THAT RUNS WELL. Electron is a bare minimum. Anything worse or missing and it automatically loses points. PWA does not count. - Here is the part nobody gets right: WORKING RICH PRESENCE, THAT DISPLAYS THE USER'S CURRENT GAME AND/OR CURRENTLY PLAYING SONG, IDEALLY ALONGSIDE A TEXT STATUS. It can have its own API and system, however the dream goal would be full backwards compatibility with Discord's existing system, maybe akin to Mastodon's API w/ Plemora extensions

...Okay, well maybe we're asking a lot of people to recreate Discord in its entirely. And I'm going to be honest, this is very wishful thinking.

But notice what I prioritize. Profiles, statuses and showing what I'm doing. Why? I like my friends seeing live updates, but being able to gate strangers out of the same thing. I love the idea of a friend being able to open my profile, see I'm playing a game, and can ask "Hey can I join in?".

Like, it's heavenly. It is all the appeal Discord had, and still has for me, and NO other platform has tried to recreate it, except one.

Nobody can (accurately) recreate Discord.

This is going to be a real incel moment, but I swear there is real reason to the madness.

Discord, is an amazing platform. But it is also a terrible platform. I agree with everybody's sentiments that the moderation and other sinister bullshit that happens behind Discord's closed doors is, well, awful. And I'm with others that we need to Boycott Discord.

And like everybody else that really cared about this, I did something about it! Granted, I waited until it was too big of an issue, but I still did. If somebody bothered to make Discord Rich Presence work on another platform, I would have considered leaving long before, but that's not the point.

When Discord announced that it was going to implement Age Verification, I did what all other Discord bound people did at the time. I stopped sending Discord any amount of money. Stopped doing quests (even with exploits), stopped buying Nitro, and I even stopped joining public Discord servers in preparation for its downfall.

And it fucking worked. However, this strategy is only going to work for so long, so we really need to have an alternative available STAT before they try to do this again and succeed.

But one problem; nobody has done it yet! Let's talk about the alternatives that are, and were available.

IRC: Dirty and unintuitive

IRC is a chat standard from the 90s that did the bare minimum. It was a chat room, and that was that.

IRC is pretty much a last resort for me. Yeah, it does 'work' to an extent and it is VERY possible to host it pretty easily. It can be secured with a password (I think???) and it has chat... And that's it.

There is no statuses, no profiles, no fancy chat formatting and no cool client mods for it. It is quite literally a very basic instant messaging chatroom, and there is nothing else to show for it. It does the bare minimum and nothing else.

That's sort of why it's the bare minimum... It's the least resistant option. It's not any good, but it's simple. And would be a pain in the ass for the less technically savvy for my friends to move to. It would be easier than Matrix, yeah, but we would be bound by our host, and we would be pretty fucked if it was down.

Matrix is just IRC in a trenchcoat

Matrix is a great privacy-conscious alternative to Discord. It suffers its own problems, which are unique to Matrix.

Matrix is, quite frankly... Horribly unintuitive. The device fingerprinting thing to keep accounts security was horribly unintuitive. It felt super clunky and like it barely worked, though keep in mind I was using Element.

It's other clients all felt like garbage, except for Element. FluffyChat was weird with configuring, and everything else pretty much operated with zero tray icon. So the choices were Element... and nothing.

This is on top of Matrix being very clearly directed towards people who want total privacy rather than controlled environment privacy... You were private and nobody could tell if you were typing or online, and that was pretty much it. That's what it felt like, at least.

Matrix felt just fucking awful to use. I see the appeal of it, especially with encryption, but the horrible clunkiness of the UI and its inability to feel good to use, not to mention it's TOXICITY to total noobs was horrible. If even I felt like I was being assaulted by it, a beginner would feel like they'd want to disappear.

Guilded is as close as we got

Guilded, historically, was interesting. It was as close as we got to a true Discord alternative. While it never had rich presence, and it's bots were pretty terrible from what I've seen in the backroom, it did have one thing that everybody else doesn't. It showed people what fucking game you were playing.

This one defining feature genuinely made all the difference. That was, until ROBLOX bought it out and made it require a ROBLOX account, and ruined any of the benefits it had over competition.

It was a shame too, because it generously gave people a whole hundred megabytes of data to upload. This is contrast to Discord giving people 20, and historically having it as low as 8MB. Quite terrible of a loss, but it kinda deserved it, because ROBLOX is a horrible platform.

Stoat and Fluxer are shadows of the knight

Stoat and Fluxer are opposite sides of the same coin. I have my own problems with these two, though for different reasons.

Stoat is pretty old, and everybody has mixed opinions on it. Some more provocative internet users have spoken out against it saying they are pretty sketchy site runners and haven't gotten very far in development since they were still Revolt.

On the other hand, it's a high picked choice for backups, at least before Fluxer came on the scene.

And fluxer... Ehh. It's new and it kinda is a weird case. Attachments are always deleted rather than stored (a fair system but also makes it impossible for longevity of data like Discord) making it problematic to show images to friends who are rarely on, self-hosting quite literally does not have a guide yet, the servers are massively struggling because of how many people migrated,,,, etc etc.

Keep in mind, that the thing that connects these two together is pretty simple: No bot or rich presence backwards compatibility. Like. literally none, neither have any form of presence or gameplay status.

With Fluxer, it is justified as they're still in development, and might get better with time. Yeah, Fluxer does get some AI help (not entirely or mostly AI generated like FRW, but here and there in controlled segments), but considering it looks and feels like it was made by hand, it's not that big of a deal. It's a miracle it exists at all.

And no, Steam Chat is not an alternative

Okay, well some people say they've migrated to Steam! Surely that would be a good alternative-

No it is not.

On top of requiring you spend money (not by receiving GIFTS) of at least 5 dollars to friend others and use a few features (which makes it impossible for broke people to add each other), the chat system is incredibly basic. Like, insanely basic. There is about maybe ten emojis you get by default, making chats pretty bland and purely text.

The groups feature is awful too, like who the fuck wants to use it? When you have to put up with Steam having barely any emojis, no cool replies or anything, it might as well be a bloated IRC client. The only benefits is have over it is pretty nothing burger.

One of those is the fact the Steam Overlay exists. You can chat to people in-game while tabbing out, however not only is that benefit carried by Steam overlay, the overlay included often has its own fair share of problems. Steam overlay is not perfect.

The game presence... Ehh. It sits in the middle of Discord's current version and initial version of it. Displaying the game name for non-steam games and games without Steam's rich presence is pretty pathetic, and not as fun as having detailed presence like on Discord. Yet, when a game even does have presence, it doesn't get anywhere close to how cool it is on Discord.

One or two lines of details on top of the game name is pretty good, and a much better implementation than Guilded's, but it still doesn't come close to Discord's level of attention.

It's like everywhere you go, nobody has fixed any of it. It's like a curse, that I'm bound to Discord or have to give up perfect transparency. And none of my friends even notice that I care so much about this level of detail... :(

In general, all of our choices are terrible (A complaint of some of the platforms I'm on)

Sigh... Let's talk a little more about platforms being awful, and we're done.

Every platform, right now, is flawed and very horrible. This is a victim of both Corporatization of everything, and the undeniable fact that humans are imperfect and will always have flaws.

So, in a way, our websites mirror that. But corporations, on the other hand, take things to eleven and smoke the whole joint up like it's a competition to make money and fuck everybody else over.

I already told you about Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and some Discord alternatives, but let's look at everything else.

Facebook, Instagram & Threads

I'm grouping all of them together since they are all owned by the same company.

Facebook is the worst offender for social media. Considering it's basically just a bear trap to take your identity and information, and nothing else... I hate them to death. They monopolized keeping up with family, make it easier to find people online (for good and bad reasons), do nothing about malicious ads, and have been borderline abusing the human race long before AI did, since about 2012.

When people give Windows 10 flak for being a spying ground. they never mention Facebook. I wonder why...

Instagram and Threads are much different... I don't like them for polarizing reasons. I don't know anything about threads so I won't pretend to know about it, but all that needs to be said it competes with Twitter. It offers nothing over Bluesky rather than just being a different jerk running it, and Instagram gives me many motivations and reasons to avoid it, as we've said before.

I think if I had to pick between Threads (meta snaking me), Twitter (elon & conversatives snaking me) and Bluesky (i have personal reasons, sorry), I think I'd rather shoot myself in the foot.

Twitter

Speaking of twitter! Twitter is owned by somebody who might as well be a transphobe with how many hateful people exist on his platform. I didn't care to look it up or research about him for this blog post, considering he owns Tesla and is widely considered to be a piece of shit anyway. But it's probably very likely he's not very pleasant.

This is on top of my historical hate for Twitter, considering it ties with Tumblr for having the worst people I've ever met on it, and facilitating some of the stupidest behavior known to man. That doesn't say much, because Twitter and Tumblr went on to make and create amazing things I'm grateful for having, but it should still be noted.

I just have a personal vendetta with Twitter in general... Like, it's pretty much their reputation to be full of people being mean. Like it was TikTok comment sections before TikTok was popular. Writing funny tweets is fun, but not that fun. I'll stick to pen and paper.

Discord is the biggest problem

Discord is a rancid platform, don't get me wrong. But with its issues aside, it holds a monopoly on communication right now.

I am a gamer. Therefore, gaming utilities are important to me. Not as important as ensuring the RGB on my case works, but as important as 'I want good chat tools with gaming use'. Discord, literally letting you invite friends to games through it and create little clans inside it, is a big part of that.

It also upholds a lot of gaming features, despite directing towards everyone now. These features, as a long time standing user (since ~2017/2019), mattered a lot to me. It also became the reason it has a chokehold on me until somebody finally replicates the black magic they put into my soup. The verbose input on what I do, and now being able to only allow friends to see that, is amazing.

But the things that platform has done... Just do not help its case at all.

Discord is infamous for poor safety measures, frequently collaborating with child endangerment safe space ROBLOX, and has had millions of incidents occur under its iron curtains since about 2020. This is an oversimplification of it, but just know that Discord users do some insanely horrifying things while everybody doesn't realize it.

And until an alternative that exists fixes it... We're all fucked. Well, not anybody else considering gaming features to everybody but me is more of a gimmick than a necessity, but for me, I'm royally fucked.

It doesn't quite help that every other platform is too basic for my taste. Discord invented an amazing feature, and now it has a monopoly on gamer communication. Awesome.

Conclusion: Snark aside, how has it been going otherwise?

Okay... That was a lot of ranting. But now, we know why I'm stuck to Discord & Spacehey, and how cutting out anything else saved me some time and reduced a little bit of stress on managing multiple accounts. Where has that lead me?

Well, it has not been flawless to say the least... I get to deal with the pretty consequences, aptly titled 'self-inflicted social struggle'. A translation for those not nerdy, I ruined my social life a fair bit.

But while it did impact my ability to socialize and make friends, it did help me expand my morality compass a little... Being able to not stress social pressure from being tied to TikTok is amazing. And when I cut out Short Form content such as TikTok and YouTube Shorts, it did wonders on my phone screen time. I spent less time sitting around on my bed scrolling videos, and spent more time building blogs. Shuffling habits. Trying new games and getting tech savvy with trivial things.

I traded social quality for technical quality. Was that a good sacrifice for me to make? I'm not entirely sure yet.

Though, considering how nice it is to be independent and having less of a trace of myself that doesn't need to exist, it's a luxury. And it's better than the alternative, in my opinion.