“I hate the internet

I love the internet

Peruse the internet from time to time”

—Lizzo

“I started so young, I didn't even have email

Now my lyric’s on your boobie”

—Robyn

my therapist tosses around the letters A, D, H, and D in succession. put me in a forest and i’m calm, but my attention jumps when it’s funneled through a screen, where the pixels scatter it into a kaleidoscope.

for me, i must ask: is it A, D, H, and D, or is it the structure of the modern internet, for which my willpower is no match? is it the hyperstimulus of the vertical video (which i must avoid altogether, or melt)?

in fact, it’s the advent of the browser tab that did me in.

by 2006, all major browsers developed the ability to open new tabs, instead of a million full windows cluttering your screen. two decades later, at the time of writing, i’ve squirreled away 46 tabs in 9 tab groups across 4 windows, plus another 88 in 12 vertical groups stored in the OneTab deep freezer.

for my individual brain functionality—dashed by a collective problem, the technooligarchs’ attention war—i must work hard to treat the phone like the computer, and treat the computer like the portal-slash-wormhole that it is.

i must also distance myself from the internet services controlled by those oligarchs, or cognitive dissonance will eat me (again, always).

so today i will share some Top Tips to disentangle yourself from the technocapitalist attention thieves.

my goals are simply to reduce my participation in some of the most odious parts of the internet: the nonconsensual AI-ificiation of everything and the distraction machine that keeps us from making, fixing, or simply being—together, alone with our thoughts, in physical space, in our bodies.

these individual quick-fixes are not the same thing as collective organizing. i am not (yet?) doing that, but some good people are: (m)otherboard, MediaJustice, Mijente.

the point of these practices is to free up my (your) brain space so that i (you) can focus on whatever it is we care about, including, possibly, collective organizing against the technooligarchs.

so, in three parts:

1. attention: rebuild it

2. extraction: untether yourself

3. retribution: enact it!!!

① attention: rebuild it

put your phone in a language you barely know

…or are trying to learn!

beyond putting the phone in black and white or purchasing a safe for it like you’re a robber trying to break in, i feel i’ve found a one-two punch with this one. teach yourself languages while making your phone more confusing, and thereby less shiny to your brain.

results:

28 leptá per day, and marginally better Greek??? i’ll take it. (don’t worry, i still spend 700 minutes on the computer.)

a bonus: choosing a non-English language spares you from new, nonconsensual AI features like Google Maps’ “Know before you go,” which no one asked for!!!

(you’ll also see how well you’ve come to know the particular iconography of Apple/Google. Cady Heron taught us math is beautiful because it’s the same in every language, but so are the “download” and “share” buttons.)

This One Browser Extension Will Save Your Life!

where most people compulsively pick up their phone, i compulsively smash Ctrl + T and then “g,” parachuting my addled self direct to Gmail.

i need to cure my addiction to the potential dopamine that email holds: a reply to love notes, a graduate school admission (lul), a party invitation. all of this—stimulation, yes, but also validation of self—could swoosh into the inbox at any time.

when i want to focus (to write, usually), i add gmail.com and mail.google.com to my new best friend, the browser extension BlockSite.

if you REALLY need to check, AGAIN, to see if X graduate school has deemed you worthy, you can disable the extension for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, so on. you can also get fancy with timers and schedules, but i just add and un-add sites when i am willing to be distracted again.

other tips for not getting addicted to (or buried by) emails:

• remove the Mail app entirely from your phone.

  • or, if you MUST know immediately when a specific person emails you, you can turn off all notifications EXCEPT for that sender.

• on the phone, don’t log into your email account with your main browser…if you must, download a second browser, hide it deep within a folder, and log in there.

• reduce your digital footprint! clean up digital waste! sooth yourself by tidying your digital space!

  • ruthlessly unsubscribe from absolutely everything! rid yourself of marketing emails from every drop-shipper that’s ever sold you a t-shirt and every coffee shop you’ve ever visited, who have all nonconsensually slid into our inboxes post-purchase.

  • to its credit, Gmail has a "Manage Subscriptions" feature, where you can see them all and unsubscribe.

  • or, you could make a shopping email! hat tip Alex Burns via Culture Study:

    

i also use the BlockSite extension to cut myself off from…

Instagram: a phonebook of mini websites

unfortunately, BlockSite is not a strong enough drug for me, as i’ve attempted to access Instagram 441 times in a 3-month span. (that’s almost 5x/day for those keeping count.)

Lil’ Dicky’s line in Justin Beiber’s “Running Over” is constantly humming in my head:

I got all up on your IG and was scrollin' down for hours

I got back to 2015 and you started lookin' young, so I stopped.

this is basically how i use Instagram: to peep through the archives of my friends/foes, to a degree approaching Creep. (like Lil’ Dicky, when people start looking young, i stop, or at least stop my judgment of them. may they extend me similar grace. we of a certain age have been on these platforms since the 8th grade…!)

but sometimes, i’m circumventing BlockSite to do something more reputable, like check a cafe’s hours or find out when an organization’s event is happening.

i try to use Instagram as just a reference, a phonebook. a portal of small websites.

here’s how:

• i go directly to profiles, circumventing altogether the wormhole of the Explore page, the ad-ridden Slop Feed, and the Meta AI search bar.

• i also use it only on the computer [shudder!], where these features do not even exist.

• if you do use the phone, you can “snooze” suggested posts, but only for 30 days (again we notice the cute-ification and human-ization of technocapitalist language).

• i do think that a broader understanding of just how sneakily these services have inverted from where they started will free us from them. platform desocialization, as lamented previously, means we’ve gone from seeing our friends and family to seeing no one we know at all. may we reject these attempts to disconnect us, and leave.

how it’s going:

• i do miss out on some events or pop-ups, but there are other ways to keep track that don’t involve Zuckerberg as a mediator (e.g., email newsletters).

• i do know less about the lives of friends of a certain looseness—vacations, dogs passing—or i hear about it later. even though social media has been desocialized, using it less does require a smaller circle and/or more proactiveness. this is, i think, not a bad thing.

• i’ve had to find other ways to keep up with what’s going on and viewpoints that major news outlets do not offer.

  • sometimes it’s people’s newsy-newsletters (e.g., Roxane Gay’s Audacious Roundups).

  • sometimes i still go to Instagram, but i go to direct to people’s pages, e.g., what does Amanda Seales (or Queen Sainthoax) have to say about this thing?.

  • however, i don’t believe we need to know everything. instead, may we know about fewer events, but more slowly and more deeply. only then can we retain the mental energy to draw links between them, to build mental maps of the political and economic structures that underlie and connect this fire hose of happenings.

• unfortunately, i have found ways to replicate the dopamine hunt, to redirect it to other places, like:

  • my Etsy stats (why yes, i WILL take this opportunity to juice my Etsy stats)

  • attempts to submit my essays for publication

  • when someone bookmarks my handmade website on mmm.page

  • see again: email. refresh refresh refresh!!!

attempt to retain attention while reading physical paper

this one’s easy, and can be colorful and fun:

when i’m reading a book and i want to look something up, i find myself undertaken by the tabs once more. fifteen minutes and 17 tabs later, the book’s been forgotten and my attention shattered.

so i started devoting the backs of my journals to writing down these random “ideas” with whatever pen from my multicolored suite laid nearby. later, i can decide if the things are even still of interest and look ‘em all up in one go. ”technofeudalism Yanis Varoufakis,” yes. “[redacted random girl from high school who’s a bodybuilder now]”, no.

Please Do Not Ever “Like” My Text Message

i simply REJECT the technooligarchs’ attempt to collapse the entire spectrum of human emotion to six technicolor icons the size of my pinky fingernail.

there’s a difference between clicking the “laugh” reaction and typing to me, “lololll.” there’s a difference between the “heart” reaction and sending me a 💞.

i absolutely have faith that my message got through to you in the Year of Whoever’s Lord 2026. you don’t need to confirm with a “👍” reaction.

i also reject the notifications that ensue. whether you’ve pulled me away from an immersive work of nonfiction, or onion-chopping, or a meeting i’m pretending to pay attention to, i do not want to be “notified” that someone—anyone—has “liked” my message.

i would rather you hate my dumb little joke than “love” it.

apologies for the soapbox, but i’d rather you just call me on the phone! i dare u! please and thank you :)

related texting practices:

• i let my texts pile up and answer them all at once during a time that one girlie on a Culture Study thread called “catching up on my correspondences.”

• i changed my DoD settings to allow phone calls to break through. i will never see your text, but again, please call me. Make The Phone A Phone Again!

• i turned off auto-capitalization as another rejection of technooligarch-imposed stylization. this put-on informality is not dissimilar to how i type love notes in lowercase, to distinguish my personally-held opinions from my Work Opinions.

• and obviously…turn off read receipts. unless you like to force yourself into a timely response. kinky!

② extraction: untether yourself

practice getting around without the phone map

this is a high horse for me, A City Planner, but TL;DR: for our safety and our spirit, we need to retain our ability to navigate our own neighborhoods without relying on a tech giant.

make mistakes! your friend will be okay if you’re five minutes late!

extract yourself from non-consensual surveillance features

it’s everywhere; it’s inevitable. but one could…

• turn off Siri and Apple Intelligence, which are indeed always listening to you and reading your stuff in order to harvest and sell your data (and drain your battery). instructions here.

• turn off Face ID. cops of all stripes can use your face to get into your phone.

• resist other biometric passkeys where possible. we are being forced more and more to use our fingerprints, our eyes, our faces to gain access the objects that we, ourselves, own and the services that we, ourselves, pay for.

• delete your period tracking apps immediately. track them on physical paper. surveillance is everywhere, including your literal vagina!

• turn off location sharing. the ability to travel unperceived is a human right, tied to the rights of privacy and migration. it’s always a good idea to tell someone where you’re going, whether you’re walking to Duane Reade or backpacking the Kalalau Trail. but it should be a choice, an active decision you make. neither your partner, nor your mom—and certainly not your lurking ex—needs to know where you are at all times. if someone wants to know where you are, “making” them ask you is a chance for connection with another person, no matter how mundane. (not unrelated, Kash Patel is buying your location data.)

• don’t link every new account to your Google account, or any other account. Google/Facebook/whatever tech giant you sign in with wants you to go through them so they can track and sell even more of your data. make new passwords for each thing. use a password manager, like LastPass, to keep track of them.

• don’t let Google read your f**cking emails (any more than they already do). consider turning off the following “features,” which require the ability to read your emails to function:

  • inbox sorting. hand-sort your correspondence; become the DJ of your own inbox. once you’ve ruthlessly unsubscribed from everything you don’t want, it becomes manageable. this also spares you from the ads they deliver direct to your inbox!! video instructions here.

  • Smart Reply and other “smart features.” instructions here.

• i haven’t done this, but you can opt out of airlines selling your travel data to the government (bless, again, 404 Media).

• here are some digital security tips for journalists that would also benefit elected officials and other public people.

• hide from AI slop ads (and other ads). AdBlockPlus and similar extensions works most of the time, though some websites require you to disable them. still, you can reduce your chances of encountering customized AI-slop products like this:
  

  

dismantle non-consensual AI features

this section was going to be easy, but every single link on removeaifrom.com is broken. conspiracy!!!

i’m not here to argue (again) against the force-feeding of AI tools to us. when you don’t want them, you can save energy and water and deprive the companies behind them of a penny or two by turning them off.

here’s what i could figure out…

• sometimes you have to email companies to ask them to turn off AI features. i did this with Notion, which i use to write and organize these diatribes. in case you also use Notion…email them: team@makenotion.com.

• pick a good browser and disable AI overviews in your search engines, which use hella energy and are collapsing the entire internet, sorry:

  • i use Firefox as a browser. it’s known as one of the best for privacy, it’s a nonprofit, and you can turn off its AI features.

  • DuckDuckGo is both a browser (like Firefox) and a search engine (like old-school Google). you can easily turn off AI summaries in the search engine, which you can’t do with the other girls.

  • Ecosia is a search engine with some of the good qualities of the above, plus you can plant some trees.

  • if you’re really wedded to Google, you can disable the AI Overview with these hack-y instructions.

• here are instructions for turning off AI features on Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Google Search, Bing for whoever’s using that, fka Twitter, Snapchat, browsers, Copilot on Edge for my government girlies, Windows, and Android. thank you, sir Guru Prasad!

Eat This, Not That

drawing upon the nomenclature of the 90s-era booklets that launched a million eating disorders (sorry), here are some quick swaps one could make:

support a Black-owned book-tracking wizness, not Mr. Bezos

did y’all know Amazon owns Goodreads?

did you know they bought it so they can spy on your reading habits, even as they allow its functionality to deteriorate?

it’s a strategy Amazon uses with other acquisitions: purchase, let languish, extract, quash. per WaPo (another casualty), “Former employees said Amazon seemed happy to mine Goodreads for its user-generated data and otherwise let it limp along with limited resources.”

hop on over to Storygraph instead, because:

• you can make cool graphs and charts

• you can rate with stars in 0.25 increments

• you can turn off AI features

• it’s not toxically social-media-ified: the focus is the books, and the stats

• it’s owned by a Black woman named Nadia Odunayo, not King Jeff. she’s building new stuff, preventing review-bombing and author harassment, and actually investing in it

join me there!

if you’re going to launch a newsletter, don’t support N4zis

when i wanted to make my newsletter (semi-)public, i chose Buttondown over Substack because Substack platforms hate speech and monetizes N4zis. it launched Bari Weiss’s right-wing takeover of CBS News by elevating her to prominence with its recommendations and rankings.

it is increasingly social-media-ifying writing and reading, unifying into yet another like-comment-scroll attention vampire instead of the author-supporting venue it was supposed to be.

it’s now going to be funded by gambling-addiction markets. is “journalism” really “better when it’s backed by live markets”??????

if the people you want to read are on Substack, there’s not too much you can do as a reader to avoid it, but you can refuse your support for its social media-like Notes and chats.

i also generally avoid “liking” an article (see emotion-collapse above). if i appreciate something about it, i say so in a comment or a direct email.

did you know most lofi music is AI slop???

soon after i hopped onto the lofi bandwagon, i learned that the vast majority of lofi on YouTube is AI-generated: audio slop, if you will.

my untrained ear can’t tell a difference in the music, though the snowglobed animations, cutesy to the point of eerie, should have been a dead giveaway.

my interest in avoiding this is the same as my interest in avoiding all AI-generated content. (in this case, artists need to be able to make art; the earth is burning and dying of thirst.)

enter the human-made lofi channel Yellow Cherry Jam. watch these two cuties and their golden retriever make music in a lavender field, among poppies, or with the fall leaves.

and anytime some AI lofi slop comes up, you can click the “Don’t Recommend Channel” button.

③ retribution: enact it!!!

welcome to the fun part ;)

claim your money from the tech giants

because giant tech companies are evilly doing illegal things at all times, they continuously remain embroiled in multiple class-action lawsuits.

because we all depend on them, we are entitled to those settlements. so get your due! peruse class-action settlement sites like this one.

there’s nothing better than a surprise Venmo cha-ching when that suit you signed up for 1.5 years ago finally settles.

(ironically, or not, they often shunt the money through Venmo or Paypal, more evils!)

things i have submitted or received claims for:

• Facebook internet tracking litigation (biggest payout yet—$40.67)

• Facebook consumer privacy user profile litigation ($35.71)

• another internet tracking litigation for “Facebook User in the United States who visited non-Facebook websites that displayed the Facebook Like button” between 2010 and 2011 ($4.01)

• Mac laptop with defective Butterfly keyboard purchased between 2015 and 2019

• Apple device performance litigation for iPhone purchased 7 years ago

• Zoom privacy litigation

(here’s a fun open suit—Tinder charged “old people” [over 29!!] more money for paid subscriptions. is that you??)

get your tiny justice!

sign up for studies to make known your discontents

the other day i extracted $75 from Google dot com by participating in a UX research study for them. i signed a literal NDA so i can’t tell you what the thing was, but i will tell you it was another thing no one asked for.

the guy was nice enough, though he soured a bit when i told him i use DuckDuckGo, not Google, lul.

i gave him my reasons for my AI skepticism and (politely) reminded him that people don’t like being forced into using AI features when we could just learn from a trusted source, escape surveillance, and not contribute to the sucking dry of water tables in unwitting, non-consenting communities across the world.

and i got money.

is this, on a net basis, ethical? unclear. is it a tiny way a person can make money and gently push back in a 1:1 fashion, so at least someone on the inside knows our position exists? yes!

•₊✶✰✶₊•

what are your tips?

who do you know organizing for digital justice?

what is the next step to get from here to there?

<3