Why I picked the platforms I did

So after a nice healthy dose of cloud-yelling, I figure I'd do a shorter bit here discussing why I picked the platforms I have. I touched on it a little bit in the other posts, but I thought it'd be worth it to go into the ones I picked and why. 

I have not unplugged completely from social media. I've simply curated it down to a few platforms that I know work the way I want to-at least, for the most part. Also keep in mind a couple of these platforms are...somewhat debatable about how 'social media' based they are. If you squint hard enough, you could consider an old message board a form of social media, but it's way, way different than, say, Tiktok or IG. I'll go into my little ideas and such in each section.

1. Bluesky. Bluesky I like because it allows me to keep my feed as my feed. it does have a 'discovery' place where algorithms come into play, but I don't have to use it; whatever I see on my feed is from my followers, or whatever they repost. And on top of that, I keep my collective relatively small there. It's definitely 'hard social media' (for lack of a better term), but it's relatively easy to curate, and keep my interests as my interests. I don't fall into that algorithmic complacency(a term I used that I quite like.) 

2. Facebook, TO an extent. It's friends and family only-I have to know you to add you, and preferably know you pretty decently, and trust you on top of it. I use it to keep in contact with friends and family for meetups via messengers, or abroad, and to keep in touch with what events(concerts, conventions I'm interested in like gaming related ones, and so on), since I don't use IG. FB is generally an alright place to keep in touch with these. I generally keep my posting light, however. I'd like to break away from it completely some day, but trying to convince my older family members to swap to SMS or Signal or something is...trying, to say the least, heh. 

3. Reddit. I consider Reddit "Soft Social Media." It's still social media because it sneaks an algorithm based on stuff you like, but you can also just make it go away(you can turn off recs) and keep yourself to a heavily curated bunch of subreddits; from there, you can just treat them like a light version of internet forums. They aren't as cool and personal, but it's something. 

4. Discord, which to be honest isn't so much social media as it is a big chatroom. IRC does a similar thing. Not much to say here except that you can just chat with whoever you want, set your profile to private so you don't get bothered and whatnot. Not really a big deal(you can spend too much time on this like any computer thing, but it's just...basic.) THAT said; Discord utilizes some stupid things, and I'd sooner swap to something else-but for now 'it'll do.' 

I am not sure I even want to count Whatsapp, since I *only* use that to contact the minion, since he doesn't have a FB messenger. It's just there.

Then there's stuff like Youtube(which might be my most active entertainment site, but I use it for music, podcasts, recipes and the like-BUT, I also try to keep it to Stuff I Know rather than randomly scroll). 

I don't think I can call myself a 'digital minimalist', so much as someone who is just being more mindful of what they use and how. I know some people who feel better getting rid of all of it, but what I am attempting is to more or less dial my use back to something resembling the midlate 2000s. (I might go back to the earlymid 2000s sometime, who knows.) What this means is "If I could do it on something like a Blackberry in the late 2000s, I'll do it on my phone." So pictures? These are cool, but I'll wait to upload them(unless it's necessary at that moment, like for directions, or if I need to buy something and I'm in a messenger.) I can surf websites, but I don't have social media apps(with the exception of messenger stuff, which, again, you could message people from that.) 

If I'm out and about, I don't hit up the social media I do use(Bluesky is from the browser), again, with the exception of messenger. If I have a particularly boring doctor's office visit, sometimes I'll bring a book with me, but if I don't have my backpack or whatnot then I might read a few websites or listen to music. 

I like the idea of using a phone as a "Swiss Army Knife" that you choose what goes into it. Having cameras/camcorder on my phone? Good stuff for when I want to use it, carrying around a minicam? Look I'm not a luddite-I don't mind technology at ALL. I mean I'm a computer and game nerd. I just don't take pictures of everything and upload them all the time. Music? I was considering getting an ipod again, believe it or not-but for now, I'll use it for music. I think it's fine to keep the amount of stuff in my pockets down, plus I DO like my bluetooth headphones. Books and reading-it's better for my eyes to do it without the phone, but I don't have all of my old cool RPG books back, so I do read PDFs sometimes. But as I reacquire them, I read them more and more, and I try to read regular books whenever I can. 

I go between Google Drive notes, and handwritten ones. Depends on where I am. If I can, I'll take a small notebook around with me. If I'm just out on a fast errand, I'll use the phone. At home, I just use notebooks, OR a PC. Mostly, what I'm trying to do is ask myself "Can this wait until I get home, like I used to?" And if the answer is yes, then I'll just do it at home. Essentially doing not "Minimalist" so much as "Digital Balance?" I've always liked taking a measured look at things when possible, and while I think going pure minimalist is great for some, I think I like that balanced late '00s approach as my favorite. 

That said, I fully plan on continuing to re-acquire my CD/LP collection for DJing, since I DO want to do that mostly hard copy, and continue buying hard copy games and books as much as I can, too. 

Anyway, I think that's enough dedicated to cloud-yelling, I might make my next post about games and music, heh.