Comic Strips

Cutting out the middle man does not involve technologically regressing.

Cutting out the middle man means stepping up and learning how the tech you use in your daily lives actually works. The only reason some tech bro can step in and ruin your life is if you let them keep you ignorant through convenience.

You want to cut out the middle man? Use, and support, open source. Fight to make everything that requires a server, be a server that you own in your own home (or is federated and in your local community). Use, and support, repairable technology... And actually repair your technology!

Is this supposed to be satire? How is print media owned by massive conglomerates, flip phones with no OSS firmware, handwritten letters delivered by a literal middleman, avoiding the middlemen??

This post and several comments agreeing with this I feel are made with some level of ignorance on "Civil Disobedience".

Minimizing participation in the orphan-crushing machine but also debating politics on available platforms are not antithetical. Debating online is as important as doing the rest of the things that are perceived as "real" worthwhile pursuits. For instance: How can we pursue a cure for cancer if the political climate ensures scientists are scorned and distrusted? If evangelising about the "real" problems you care about is labelled as politics then can you really make progress without "political" action such as boycotting, protests and civil disobedience?

In the same vein, doing the small things in protest is the stepping stones to doing bigger things. It works the same way for any pursuit. Why shouldn't I practice discipline with my disdain for all the evil in small ways while also pushing for more?

Jeff Bezos makes billions of dollars, But He didn't get the $100 from me this year. Sure that sounds like a waste of time and energy for not much impact. But It didn't cause me any hardship. But believe me that $100 had either a compounding effect on my own wealth this year or to some people i gifted essential food to. That impact was felt a lot more by me or one of the people i gifted food or essentials to.

We're techy enough nerds to know there's another way to be free of billionaire influence while still keeping some resemblance of modern communication: self-hosting.

We don't need to go back to handwritten mail, FOSS is the way to go.

No. The capitalists are the problem. Not the tech grunts.

Too bad they crushed all the old cars

That’s exactly what is so nice about FOSS based systems. You can use technology but without the tech bros and the corporate enshittification.

I am and probably always will be a tech enthusiast, but as time goes on I find myself more and more looking for old technology to avoid planned obsolescence, anti-repair bs, telemetry & tracking, lack of consideration for quality of life....

This is not how things were supposed to be. But this is how things will be if we don't do something about oligarchs and certain CEOs.

That last panel hit me like a truck because... yeah, that's what people think happens when they do their little personal choice things to pretend they matter.

They really buy like a paper book once and go "ah, yes, Bezos is fuming right now" while he makes another billion.

We have lost all sense of how to influence society and all ability to gauge scale. For all the folksy traditionalism in this (which includes driving a gas guzzler from the 70s, apparently?) the Internet has created this entirely disproportionate sense of our footprint on the world and this strip is as much a result of the hyperconnected dystopia as everything it's complaining about.

In my experience this is extra bad for Americans who, frankly, didn't need that much of a push to go from their individualist, self-centered perception of society to this vision of sitting on a couch listening to a walkman as activism.

or, you know, you can have best of both worlds with open technologies. tech that you own and control.

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.

When ceiling fans and AC units requires an account, yeah, something's wrong.

I think the issue people have with "tech" is that much of the software and devices sold take up too much space and do things people don't want them to do, without offering choice, configurability, and options for full control

Please use windows XP and connect it to the internet and see what happens LOL

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.

I've been wanting to convert my life to "off grid tech". I have a nest camera i bought in 2016. So it's pre Google. Starting about 6 months ago, Google told me unless I allow them full 24/7 access to the cam then I can't use it. A product i bought almost a decade ago is useless unless I let them spy on me. Fuck you Google.

So anyways, off grid tech. Home surveillance on my own local server protected with physical data and VPN. No more streaming, pirate everything with local server. No more Google or Amazon anything. Music? Mp3. Email? No Gmail, maybe Proton or something. I'll do all banking through home desktop through VPN. Etc, etc.

I hope to have all these things achieved by 2030

I get the idea, but I am kinda stuck on the letter writing bit. They do know that the post getting delivered is kinda built on middlemen right?

pre-computerised car

No one want to fiddle with carburetor anymore thank you very much.

And tbh, 2010-2015 is comfortable enough and less bullshit.

Basically how i try to live my life! Buy physical media, setup a nas, unplug from the internet on most weekends (or limit it).