A scrappier digital life
People are often surprised to hear that I haven’t bought a single thing from Amazon in over 5 years. Even the most hardened of socially-minded progressives will talk openly about shopping on Amazon. It’s essentially just the worlds supermarket at this point and many don’t see the point in boycotting it. People usually ask me why I do it then. After all they’re so big that one less customer won’t change anything. Jeff Bezos won’t be crying his eyes out and blowing his nose with hundred dollar bills because I didn’t buy a pair of pliers off his website. His private jet will still pollute the atmosphere. He’ll still bust unions and work his employees to the bone. So why do I do it then?
When presented as some sort of ideological stand it rings a little hollow when you also consider that I subscribe to Prime Video because that’s where I watch The Expanse, Invincible and The Boys. Sorry but I’m not young and patient enough to torrent. It’s not entirely about anti-capitalist street cred. After all, I use plenty of other Big Tech services like Netflix and Spotify. I recently went back to Meta by creating an Instagram account again. The FOMO wasn’t enough to keep me around so I deleted it after about 6 months but I still used it this year. I do use WhatsApp to talk to friends because that’s kind of unavoidable let’s face it.
At some point I just made a decision to keep what was meaningful to me and discard the rest. Ditching Amazon happened so long ago that my brain has rewired to search local shops, browse second-hand classifieds or just ask friends for things I need which is far more fun than clicking a button. I enjoy playing guitar and learning how to make music but everything from my amplifier to my effects pedals to my MIDI keyboard was bought either in an independent bricks-and-mortar shop or purchased second-hand through adverts.ie (our version of Craigslist basically). Even though I use Spotify for podcasts and listening to music I have discovered the quiet joy (and expense) of thumbing through stacks of vinyl looking for a good find. I realised that you can pick up second-hand CDs for next to nothing in charity shops and second-hand music places which has had the unintentional consequence of me relearning how to listen to entire albums from start to finish - something I hadn’t done in years. Hell, I’ve even started buying actual books from bookshops again.
The same goes for my digital life. Several years ago I deleted Facebook. A few years later - quite a while before the Musk takeover I might add - I turned my back on the insidious outrage factory that is Twitter, tossed a grenade over my shoulder and never looked back. I then dusted off the Mastodon profile I’d had for a quite a while and embraced it open arms. It was everything the others weren’t. It definitely isn’t perfect though. A sizeable proportion of the people on the Fediverse are constantly talking about being on the Fediverse and it can become a repetitive echo chamber at times. None of those minor bugbears change the fact that it’s authentic, it doesn’t insert itself into your brain chemistry and it gives you complete control over what you do and don’t see. So if something irritates you or you just don’t feel like engaging with it you can opt out without much hassle.
Another thing that almost didn’t make it into this post is that I’ve been a full time Linux user since circa 2016. I don’t even have a parachute partition of Windows on my hard drive. If I can’t install your software on Linux, use Wine/Proton to run it reliably or use it through a web browser I just won’t use it. The reason this almost didn’t make it in is because I just plain didn’t think of it given how normal using Linux has become to me. This alone puts me in an incredibly small percentage of computer users worldwide.
I’ve recently turned my attention to other aspects of my digital life. The site this post is published on was built using Hugo and is hosted on a virtual server that I pay for. I’m currently challenging myself to publish thirty blog posts in thirty days (you’re reading day two) to jump start my neglected imagination. I got sick of soaking up digital trash that wastes my precious time so I’m creating my own to waste yours instead. This is my small rebellion against the companies who mined my attention to turn it into profit and power for far too long.
Sorry for using the T-word but Trumps victory last week was the line in the sand. I don’t need to tell you that the digital oligarchs who will benefit from this event are only going to become greedier and crueller now. The way I deal with this is by appraising how I interact with the world around me. I don’t have to play the game anymore. I have no desire to flip over the apple cart but I can at least give it a bit of a kicking to see what happens. How can I change my online and offline habits to make life a little less samey and railroaded? How can I take a step back from the ’normal’ life without starting a commune and getting really into kombucha? There has to be a happy medium and I’m going to find out where it is.
That’s why I don’t shop on Amazon.