@oluOnline I have been online for a long time and continue to meet people and learn things I wouldn’t otherwise. While the percentage of annoying/terrible ppl has increased, the good/fun/interesting ppl are still here. Just scroll past the rest.

@oluOnline Like the saying goes 'Look for the helpers'. It's taken a long while for me to realize how much I have to curate what I'm exposed to. But now that I have, the experience is drastically different.
I've always wanted the internet to be one giant library, and for me it is. My youtube is where I've learned to adult in ways my parents never taught me. Cleaning furniture, how to take care of my own hair, new ways to cook and lots of simple low cost recipes that work -

@oluOnline I've seen a lot more people (including myself!) getting into personal sites as a form of expression and rejection of the idea that corporate sites/platforms have to define our online lives, and that makes me happy :--)

@oluOnline I think of it a little like climate justice. We need to rebuild the Internet, but that means we have an opportunity to build back better.

So far we haven't taken that opportunity, either with the climate crisis or e.g. generative AI threatening facts & human creativity. But tomorrow we could, there's still a chance that we could make things different in a good way.

@oluOnline@social.gfsc.studio I transitioned in part because of the support I found online.

@oluOnline people on TikTok explaining things about their communities to people in other communities, and their comments sections filled with "oh that's so cool!" or "oh, that explains X interaction I had!" and just being enthusiastic to learn about and empathize with each other

@oluOnline i think the things that make online life bad are capitalism, not online life itself. online life could be pretty sweet and i think despite the ~ everything ~ has prob done a ton to create some kind of messy imperfect access to knowledge. the q is if we can make good on it before making the planet uninhabitable. but also it maybe gives us the best chance to do that? idk

@oluOnline To me, the current state of the internet is a powerful demonstration of how much people want to connect with each other, on a deep level; so much so that we will put up with astounding amounts of BS in order to try.

Once we get clear, collectively, of the current limitations of the Not Good of the web, it's going to be amazing. We've had a taste of what planet-scale interconnection can be.

We're never going back.

@oluOnline The #IndieWeb and #WebPunk culture (ad blockers, script blockers, non-intrusive websites, not using "big tech" sites) has made me more optimistic about the web recently.

@oluOnline I feel optimistic as we’re creating our own spaces with like minded people across all types of skill levels to get together and chat about making websites together over at the Cafe https://32bit.cafe

Each week we have new people jumping on, some with no experience who end up with their own website within a couple of weeks.

Small communities like ours make me optimistic for the web ☺️

@oluOnline people. It’s always the people

@oluOnline beyond all enshittification efforts, the “good old web” lives on. It's very hard for web tech to actually die: even when it goes into disuse, there are corners of the internet that stick to it, keep it alive, and improve on it, and when the shitty platform of the decade will have passed, the strongholds of independence will still be there.