How do we consume less content and be more social/productive in a way that isn’t concerned with profit?
If you are looking for early internet check out gemini and the tildeverse. I have found really interesting people on there. It’s nice to go to their capsules and read their stories or poems. With zero fear of them click baiting or bullshiting to create engagement. As there is zero ability to monetize that traffic.
How do we consume less content and be more social/productive in a way that isn’t concerned with profit?
I’m not sure to understand what you mean?
We consume less by doing more. Say, we watch less YouTube about what we want to do and start doing more of what it is we want to do.
And we’re less concerned by profit the moment we start doing stuff or going more toward people (spending time with them) without expecting much if anything in return beside enjoying their company and/or enjoying doing that stuff we are doing. Without expecting to be paid anything in return.
As far as being more productive, I’m not sure to understand what you mean either but, here again, doing more is a fine starting point.
It’s consumerism that wants us to believe we need to endlessly consume (aka spend more money and time) to do stuff. We don’t.
Well, yes, we do need to consume a little resources and we also need to feed/teach our head (ideas as well as art don’t come out of nowhere), but we certainly don’t need to constantly be stuffing ourselves with new content or tools—think obesity, but for the mind.
So, if we want to be able to do interesting stuff on our own. We start by learning to do (interesting) stuff. Aka, by doing crappy stuff. And that’s true for every single things we may wish to do.
Or, should we consume more content that is conducive to being social? What type of content would that be?
We don’t need to consume any content to be social. But here again maybe I don’t understand the question, what would be a type of ‘content conducive to being social’?
BTW, our species have existed (aka being social) for million of years, meanwhile Twitter/X and the others have existed since around 2005. So, we clearly don’t need them to be ourselves but they absolutely need and want us to think otherwise so they can sell us more ads and make more money.
@Libb@jlai.lu Well to be honest, there was a time on the internet that felt like people produced content which was not driven in any way by profit. This content was purely made to socialise with other people who spent a lot of time using the internet.
I think the internet has a lot of potential for being a place for growing ourselves individually and socially, instead of being somewhere toxic or profit driven. That’s what I mean by productive: growing ourselves and growing community. Also growing these things without some form of profiting company looming over it.
That’s how I view something like the fediverse, or how I view personal blogs like your own blog for example.
I think the internet has a lot of potential
I only mentioned social media apps, not the Internet which is much older (I started using BBS in the early 80s and my first web browser was Mosaic). So yeah, the Internet has the potential, and always had. Not sure it will have for much longer though but that’s another question.
The issue is that for more and more people ‘the Internet’ is nothing but an empty space in which they can find their ‘app of choice’ or their service of choice. And they have no idea there is a thriving world that is well-alive outside of those walled gardens Including the many remaining blogs—like mine, which is tiny, and so many others. A lot of blogs are and non corporate owned websites also try to monetize their content, though, but many, like mine, do not.
Edit: clicked publish too quickly, added the rest of my reply.
Volunteer in your community.
Universal Basic Income
There is no way to accomplish this return of the hobbyist internet without deep systemic change (that won’t ever happen if we’re honest). We can only hope to carve out our little corners by leaving the lurker mindset and actively participating in the discussion of our hobbies:
Document your struggle running that one RPG system as a duet. Post how to solve the bug you were having with Linux. Review that one book you just finished. Make a list of your favorite resources on baking. Contribute to open source.
Problem is, we can’t force people to do it, we can only do it ourselves and hope to make an impact, and that isn’t really effective…@theblips@lemm.ee True though, it is not effective? We are talking right now in a non-profit area of the internet achieved through open source contributions and community participation :)
I’d say that’s a pretty nice, effective thing that has been accomplished
Or, should we consume more content that is conducive to being social? What type of content would that be?
