"Of all things I have loved and lost, I miss my mind the most."

I started blogging in 2005 as it seemed the next interesting step from having a homepage.
I thought it would be cool to show off what I was doing, brag about my accomplishments and interact with strangers. This was, of course, back when meeting strangers was interesting, and not a masochist exercise in dodging shitheads and rage monkeys. (Parenthetically now, I have a new respect for women on dating apps having to deal with dick pics)
And the thing about constantly dodging a barrage of feces and dicks?  Makes it difficult to think about anything else: now all I ever want to do is complain.

Up until then, the Internet had been a continuous stream of meeting interesting people! People all over the world! Describing the things I do, and talking about the things I thought about seemed like fun!

That is not the case now.

Some of the things I might have talked about became self-censored. As anonymity evaporated, posts became increasingly PR oriented.  Bland, flavorless pap.

Think about it! 

Do you want your boss reading about how you blew all the windows out of a 1980 Pinto using a device made from electrical junk and a wading pool?
Do you want your dating pool to shrink because you wrote ten thousand words on your comfort food activity of watching 'William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet' and 'The Crow' back to back while eating popcorn soaked with maple syrup?
Do you want your mother's hoity-toity friend to get bent IRL because you verbally crushed her son in a IRC argument over Gillain Anderson Nude fakes?

Well, no.

I have argued before that networks- and information - is more valuable when scarce. I don't have the chops to chase that intuition down and quantify it, but while I think the early Internet had better, sparser, links, the new tightly webbed one is less desirable in a lot of ways.*

Analytics.
I don't care if Zuckerberg knows I have a poor regard for him** , but I do care if Youtube thinks its a good idea to suggest a constant stream of anti-feminist, gun-worship or pro-bigot videos. Something in my patchwork of interests provokes this. I don't know what: amateur chemistry, watching 'Forgotten Weapons', researching UFOs.***

But I am tired of it.
The world is full of poorly made, over-hyped 'algorithms', and the more in their databases the worse they seem to get. Show me videos that a well-read middle aged guy with a interest in science and weird tales would like, and I'd be happy.
So presenting lots of data isn't improving my experience, and the Net just seems like a more horrible and toxic thing every day.

I understand there is a lot of things that can be done to rebuild anonymity. But there is a lot of really well paid or really well motivated people hammering away at that. Criminals. Dictators. Corporations. We are plankton to those Leviathans**** , and how much of my life and time do I want to burn trying to become unpalatable?

Its easier just to dodge the baleen by growing legs and crawling up on the shore.

Today I looked at my bannerhead and realized I wasn't writing about any of the above.
I realized every time I started to write something, (and there are many aborted drafts) it was just a whiny screed about how things were all shite, and that is what even this post is becoming too.

So on occasion, if I want to write and publish something, I will do it with a one-time, throw-away blog or forum post. I will tag it under 'Radiopsychedelica' which still seems to be a rare enough search term to be useful. I won't delete this blog because I have a natural archivists abhorrence of words vanishing, even poor words.

 "And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates:"  is not my style, thanks. 

 

So after much consideration,

This blog is closed.

*Marshall Mcluhan remarked on the institution of a Global Village, but never carried on to point out that in a village everyone knows everything about everyone, and only conformity is possible.


**Whereas I think Elon Musk wants to be Tony Stark, but is at best Justin Hammer.*****

***I really can't imagine what I did to get the constant stream of 'X but every time Y it speeds up' and 'White guy speaks Chinese' videos.

****Yes, that is a Hobbes reference.

*****You want to argue this? Really? Why don't we just fact-check what Musk has actually done himself and not just paid somebody to do and compare that to a fictional character.  And then, get a life. Both of us. This is EXACTLY WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE INTERNET.