Opting Out

For many years I have been struggling with the trajectory of our digital lives. I have decided that I am opting out.

In the not-too-distant past, the art we valued had a place in our lives. Books, CDs, and DVDs filled shelves in homes — physical collections of the art that shaped who we were. We listened to entire albums. We watched the movies we cherished over and over again. We could share what excited us with friends and family.

The internet has turned art into a service. We watch what is available on the platforms we pay for (or mooch off our friends and family). We pay for access to music but mostly listen to curated playlists of singles from various artists. Even the digital media we pay for is not really ours — we pay for access to content we never actually possess. If a big tech company wants to remove something you paid for from their servers, or edit it in some way, you may never know, let alone have any recourse to preserve the version you "purchased."

Perhaps you no longer want to support certain big tech overlords down the road. What do you do with all those books you bought on Kindle that can't be transferred to another device or downloaded? What about those songs you downloaded on iTunes with DRM restrictions?

I'm not against streaming or digital downloads per se. But I do think our relationship with media has fundamentally changed in a way that primarily benefits the companies holding the keys rather than the consumer.

A similar thing has happened on social media. There once was a time when it felt like these platforms served me. I could follow who I wanted with minimal interference. Now I am lost in a sea of week-old TikTok reels and ads parading as genuine content. The people I actually use the app for get buried under an algorithm designed to keep me engaged so that some tech company can track what I linger on — building an ever more sophisticated profile for the purpose of personalized advertising.

In an effort to break free from this paradigm, I have been going down the rabbit hole of Linux servers, open-source software, home labs, and self-hosting. I've learned that it is easier than ever to take control of your digital life.

Over the past few weeks, I have built a server that hosts my media and is accessible from anywhere. I can replace things like Google Drive or iCloud by keeping my own data on my own hardware, rather than paying rent to store my files on a tech giant's servers — rent that will only go up over time. I'm doing all of this on a 15-year-old computer that is actually quite overpowered for the task. I will no longer pay a company to hold my data for ransom.

This site will be where I share what I want about my life, on my terms.

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