I hate to break it to you, but your personal consumption choices will not make a meaningful difference to the amount of enshittification you experience in your life.

So do I, but I wouldn't recommend it for everybody. Hosting your email has sucked for decades. For a long time the issue was incoming spam. That never really went away, but now in addition to that you get a constant barrage of people trying to crack into your server. Plus, you get the fun of trying to convince the big email gatekeepers that you're still legit. And for that one they change the rules constantly and on a whim.

What a fantastic post, thank you for linking it!

Seriously though, I do think that it's interesting that this comic and that essay seem to take up opposite positions*, but in each case they attract more contrary comments than ones that agree. I suppose no matter what you post, any given person is more likely to comment on it if it pisses them off than if it confirms their beliefs. It's a good thing Lemmy doesn't reward engagement, or else we'd be up to our eyeballs in ragebait, eh?

*Unless you read the whole thing instead of bouncing off the first paragraph.

Also, it's getting harder and harder to live without modern devices.

Try living in the modern world without a cell phone. It's hard to do almost anything without one. If you get a flip phone that can handle text messages you can get a bit further, but it's a matter of time before that's not enough.

And sure, you can listen to cassettes on a walkman. And maybe you saved some tapes from 40 years ago, and maybe they still work. But, how do you get more music? Sure, you can probably find a place to order tapes online. But, then they want to verify your account and that means texting a verification code to your phone and...

As for print media. Sure, you can still buy paper books. But, if you want a real newspaper, good luck. There are a few that are still around, AFAIK you can still get the NY Times in print. But, I really doubt you still even have a local newspaper, let alone a newspaper that prints on paper.

luddites.

Luddites, the followers of Ned Ludd? The guys who smashed machines and went to war against the factory owners who were defending their factories with soldiers and cannons?

They're a lot more similar to the guys with guillotines than you seem to think.

Also, food delivery has always involved middlemen. Instead of food delivered through an app, it was food delivered after a phone call. But, it was a human middleman delivery driver doing the delivery.

I gave up on DVDs long ago, but I replaced them with files stored on a local NAS. Dealing with discs is just too clunky.

I do sometimes miss the extras they'd have on DVDs though. I ripped some DVDs and kept some of that stuff, but I haven't found a good system that indexes and organizes the extras.

If you use homebrew you can install all kinds of things on a mac. So, you get the power of a Unix-based machine with the nice eye-candy, ease of use, rock solid drivers, etc. of an Apple device.

But, the phones are another matter. Those things are so locked down it's ridiculous. We really need competition in the mobile phone OS market.

Pre computerized cars is going to be pretty hard. We'll run out of old beaters eventually.

I see a few comments about self hosting stuff to escape the clutches of big tech, and while all that is effective to a high degree, it is beyond the abilities of the general populace.

Besides, I am also of the opinion that not everything has to be digital or smart.

I relish writing and receiving letters, it is tangible and indicates commitment. Fortunately, postal system isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

I like reading newspapers and it was sad to see all shops in my neighbourhood stop selling them during or after COVID. It was equally sad to see a lot of magazines not survive that period.

I miss my old TV that was simpler to use and started quicker than my newer smart TV. It does not matter if I disconnect the latter from the internet, it takes its time to load up. Besides, I don’t see any perceivable difference in picture quality from the distance I watch from.

Older laptops, though heavier, were more repairable. In certain aspects, they are better than modern ones: more tactile keyboard, nicer screen ratio (4:3). Of course, the newer laptops decimate the old ones when it comes to performance and screen quality but that is just technology progressing.

I could keep going on with a plethora of product categories. But across all my points, I wish some companies could continue offering such products, at least to a customer base that is willing to pay more just to support the existence of those products.

Yeah middlemen have been a part of almost all commerce from the start, every store, every trade and most services are in some way middlemen. I think the comic's message is good but is attributing the terrible actions of llm to middlemen in error.

It's so hard for people to agree that we should be doing something. Instead you argue that you are not going to do anything just out of spite all because OP personally may not be doing anything but their words are a bit preachy. If OP was a hypocrite but they still said the right thing why would you deliberately disagree? What would motivate you to act?

on the other hand, there is generally not much to discuss if you have an agreeing position. right?

Don't be ashamed of being a Luddite. The Luddites were actually fighting for a righteous cause.

Too true, just didn’t think I’d be following their lead…

Sure, but where are the comments disagreeing with the disagree-ers? It's all attack, no defense.

fair point, but to get there you must go to the comments to begin with, which I believe might be less likely you do when you don't have something to say.

WhatsApp is just one more App for me. There are two people I wish I could convince to use signal but cannot…

Yeah, but Matrix has bridges for almost anything.

And people still use email.

we should be doing something

Ok, let's dive into it. What does "doing something" exactly mean? I've been into this since before I could vote, so I saw quite through it.

"Doing something" means a lot of different things for different people. Signing a petition, going to a march, writing on a wall, you name it. For some people "doing something" means sitting all day discussing about socialism and revolution in a living room. For others it is more biking together with Critical Mass against oil on weekends. There are those seeking small daily actions like recycling, and then there are the activist jumping on a boat with Greenpeace to save the whales, and the terrorists doing anything from damaging something to placing a bomb.

What does it mean for you "doing something"? Once you determine that, determine how much of that something would be adopted by the general population and what level of change could that reasonably achieve. I'll anticipate the result of you exercise: the bigger is your something and the smaller will be the adoption, but the product in terms of impact will be always "very small".

Take Occupy Wall Street to make an example. I loved the whole thing, I love the work of David Graeber, and it was a massive success, but what did they achieve in practice? The expression 99% entered in the general culture and there may be a bit more awareness of the problem of billionaires, but looking at cold metrics it was like a big storm, then the sun came back and a few days later the last puddle evaporated.

you argue that you are not going to do anything just out of spite all because OP personally may not be doing anything but their words are a bit preachy

Who said I'm not doing anything? OP said "You still work. You still buy. You still support the system." to which I replied that I'm no more a naive 16 years old who shouts fuck the system and dreams to live off-the-grid avoiding the rat-race... and then goes back home to have dinner with mum.

If you are an adult and you want to go for it, be my guest! You may become Greta-Thunberg-famous, and people will follow you on social media. You will convince some people that, I don't know, we should buy durable and reparable things to save the planet and fight consumerism. You will have an impact, albeit very small, and that will be a massive achievement if you dedicate your whole life to that.

Just, please, stop with idiotic replies accusing people to be enslaved in the system because it's an insult to anyone who is currently looking for a solution for cancer, saving lives as a firefighter, building houses where people will live, growing crops, and even keeping up internet so people can praise the revolution against the machine from their bedrooms.