Gnome Anne

is an island


Bad Blog

Ok so imagine a blog, but bad.
It's a bunch of thoughts but instead of being dated and organized, they're thrown up on a single page with a visual cacophony of mismatched fonts, low res images, and general "I test in prod" energy. Nothing is streamlined. Nothing is shiny. Nothing is designed to hold your attention or make you spend money. It's just a place for me to put my little thoughts on the internet.
blinkie that reads: i test in prod blinkie that reads: always building blinkie that reads: hell no SEO blinkie that reads: all systems require maintenance
I've been making time to play outside.
I was an indoor kid growing up. I had lots of body problems that inhibited the kind of play the outdoot kids loved -- I couldn't run, or do monkey bars. And I loved books more than anything. All I ever wanted was to have a cozy corner to read in, to be whisked away from this world where my body hurt and the kids were mean, and instead go on a grand adventure. I wanted to leave my physical environment and send me mind somewhere else. Somewhere better.
And then I got the internet.
I was certainly addicted to the internet as a child. I remember closing my eyes and seeing the neopets forums imprinted on the inside of my eyelids. I dreamed about people I'd never met. I contextualized the real world in terms social dynamics I developped online. And this was the late 90s, early 2000s, when the idea of your online life spilling into your "real" life was still weird.
I published my writing online and found a community of creatives. I lied about my age, and befriended people FAR TOO OLD. I love it. It felt more real than my reality. I was a child and had no autonomy to change my situation -- my only recourse was escapism.
But now I'm grown and although capitalism still has be under its thumb and my body still hurts, I have SO MUCH POWER to change my life in so many ways. I can choose who I spend my leisure time with. And although I must work, I have some flexibility in where and how I work. If someone yells at me, I can walk away. If I am interested in something, I can learn about it. Adulthood, for all its faults, is incredible.
Except that part of my brain that got addicted to the early web is still there. And now, this kind of addiction is so normalized it's not even questioned. You check your phone 20 times a day? Normal. You get FOMO when you're not online? Normal. You get more involved in stuff happening online than in your local community? Normal.
Dystopian. Tragic. Normal.
I knew it was making me feel bad but I didn't know what to do. So I decided to try something revolutionary: go outside.
I was listening to a podcast recently (Ologies with Alie Ward) where they talked about how our attention behaves in nature. The hypothesis is that from an evolutionary perspective, we want our attention to grazy our environment, take things in gently, and not get distracted with introspection. Stay present; stay safe. And this phenomenon has been studied: people who walk in nature lower their stress levels really quickly. It can be measured in their hormones, brain activity on an FMRI, and self-reported mood. Things seem less dire when the mind moves lightly.
I have ADHD and autism (oof). Within these conditions, I rank at the highest level for fixations -- meaning my brain locks onto things and does not let go. This leads to a psychological phenomenon called rumination, where you revisit the same thoughts over and over again, typically in a negative context. This is different than reflection, like when you journal about your problems and move through your emotions.
Since my diagnosis, most things in my life have improved, but one thing has become harder: knowing that I have disordered attention makes me think that things that work for neurotypicals won't work for me. I'm too different. I'm the bad kind of special.
Except the wild thing is: they do.
Anyone who has been told to "deep breathe" through a panic attack can attest how fucking annoying it is when people who don't have mental illness/disorders think the solutions that work for their problems will work for yours. BUT. Those solutions do work for us -- they just aren't enough by themselves. We need other supports, accommodations, and sometimes medications. But all that annoying advice (sleep enough, eat well, excercise, deep breathe, meditate, journal) does actually help too.
And so I began walking outside, in nature, every day.
I began considering the trees, the strange flowers in the underbrush, the different species of grasses, the bird calls, the breeze.
I began searching for mushrooms year round, and noting when they fruit.
Being a human is so hard and complicated. I have such robust systems to keep my brain from melting down. But I swear, just wandering in nature has been the greatest help out of all of them. Something in my brain has rewired. I am different.
Part of this has been viewing the attention economy a confused disinterest: why would I care about the latest TikTok drama when pondera pines exist? Why should I check my notifications when the chickadees are singing?
That world is secondary to this world. My online life is less real than my body in my environment. And if that's obvious to you, great, but if it's not, if that feels challenging or controversial, I feel you. It's often hard to imagine the real world has a place for you. It can feel so dire. But I encourage you to tap into the non-human conversations around you. You will find they are far less judgemental. They make space for you. They accept you as another inhabitant of the ecosystem.
Things are dire in the human world, and it's easy to feel hopeless. The attention economy THRIVES when you feel powerless: people without power scroll more. And the people in power THRIVE when you scroll: people stuck in the scroll don't fight back. It's a terrible and intentional cycle, a system designed to do what it does. Hold you.
These systems are artificial in a way a cedar is not. Power dynamics, institutions, laws, money, gender: all these social constructs that feel so absolute but could never be as real as a brook polishing stones. And when you understand this, feel it, see it in your environment, suddenly those impossible forces start so seem malleable.
In order to effectively oppress a people, you must suppress their imagination. If they can imagine a better world, they can fight for a better world.
The first step to imagining a better world is seeing the beauty in this one.
Consider things with your own mind. Direct your own attention. Share your thoughts with people you trust. Do not let them direct you, lead you down a cognitive path. Learn to let your mind move lightly, considering, listening, then reflecting instead of ruminating.
Go play outside.

Life outside the Attention Economy

Tune in
Log off
Wake up

OFFLINE

scholastic book cover that says INTERNET
exploding computer
You are offline
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I was offline for 30 days.

I still had to use the internet for work, but I removed all apps from my phone, didn't use any streaming services (I borrowed DVDs from the public library!), and avoided all social media.

For context, I'm a content creator (~ internet stuff maker~) who has followings on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, Twitter, BlueSky, YouTube, Twitch and Kofi. And I ~make stuff~ for all of those platforms as a second, part-time job and hobby. I'm pretty locked in to The Feed. So taking a month offline wasn't just about unplugging from the constant input, it was also about taking a break from the constant output.

During my month off I did a lot of stuff:
- I repainted my bathroom
- I reorganized my closets (including getting bins, putting all my bits into bins, and putting little labels on the bins)
- I read (most of) 10 books
- I started hiking again (I've been in physio for a knee dislocation, but I'm finally able to do easy hikes! I did 3)
- I made a Star Trek TNG fansite wheregnomeannehasgonebefore.neocities.org
- I wrote another 10 000 words in my Star Trek TNG fan fic
- ... I watched a season of Star Trek TNG
- I journaled. I did "morning pages" for a couple weeks, but continued to journal in a less regimented way the whole time
- I started a new certification program for my job. I did the first 3 (of 12) components
- I voted in a federal election
- I did my taxes myself (they are ~very complicated~)

I'm devastated to report that I feel so, so much better when I'm not chronically online. It turns out *literally everyone* was correct. But in addition to better emotional regulation and, in some ways, productivity, I noticed another major change: better social battery.

I have become used to being treated like shit. I *expect* people to half-listen when I talk just to fight me on mundane statement. I *expect* people to ask seemingly innocent questions that are actually passive aggressive attempts to waste my time, energy, and patience. I *expect* people to talk about me, in front of me, like I'm not there. I *expect* people to occasionally yell slurs at me. This is normal.

This is not normal.

Humans are incredibly adaptable. We can mould ourselves into seemingly impossible shapes, and manage to find some comfort in those contortions. Over time, stress becomes a background hum -- a background hum that erodes our organs and frays our well-being. It feels less like a fire and more like a dollop of arsenic in your morning coffee. *This is fine.*

But this is not fine.

Because as much as we are adaptable, we are equally social. Our survival has always depended on our community, and our acceptance in that community. Our nervous systems aren't meant to face this much interpersonal friction while we watch our social contract be gutted and sold for scraps.

The internet used to be a place. Like any other place, it was somewhere you went, and somewhere you left.

The internet is no longer a place. It follows me wherever I go. It's burrowed into my thought processes -- it haunts me even when I manage to leave. *The medium is the message*. These online patterns of communication and interpersonal bullshit don't just affect how I communicate online, but how I communicate in any context. Worse still, they affect how I think. How I communicate with myself.

I was doing my daily journaling, writing in a little notebook that I will never share with anyone, and I found myself hedging my statements. Anticipating misunderstandings. Anticipating bad faith responses. In my fucking *journal*. I call this Twitter-speak in my head, but it happens everywhere. Someone wants to share an idea, but they phrase it like: "I have a thought that I think is interesting but if you don't that's ok because everyone is different and my thought only reflects my worldview which is characterised by my own lived experiences" -- and then the thought it "I like grilled cheese" and someone replies "I'm lactose intolerant, you asshole." THIS IS NO WAY TO LIVE!

Nothing was meant to be shared with *everyone* in a way that *everyone* can understand. The audience for your idle thoughts was never supposed to be *all of humanity*. Context collapse isn't just a disruption of the social order, it's a fundamental rewiring of how humans communicate.

So what now?

I don't know. Honestly, I didn't want to rejoin the internet when my month off ended (... except that I wanted to talk about Star Trek more because I simply do not have feral enough fans to hang out with locally and my partner can't bear another info dump or literary analysis or discussion of camera movements). I know I missed streaming on Twitch, so I'll go back to that. But it's possible I'm done with short form (tiktok, instagram reels, yt shorts), at least for the foreseeable future. I'm going to keep social media off my phone. I want to invest more energy in Web 1.0 stuff, like my neocities websites, and less energy in social media. And I want to continue taking months off throughout the year so I don't just sucked back into the rhythm of The Feed: I'm thinking April, August and December. But this question is bigger than me, and I don't want to cheapen a social issue by framing it as my personal self-actualisation journey.

I'm not sure exactly what I'm going to do going forward, but I know I'm going to have to try really, really hard to do it.

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Le Tigre - Get Off The Internet

content content content

currupting creativity

Every day, I discover a new way that the internet is rotting my brain.
Today, I’m thinking about how “content creator” brain is worming its way into my creative process.

When I was rising in popularity on TikTok, I would take clips of my D&D show, edit them and share them as ~2 minute clips. These clips were *popular* -- they reached a far wider audience than the show itself, and drove (some) audience to the show. Nice! My creative work was getting more attention! And all I had to do was repackage it for a new platform!

But it would often take me hours and hours to edit a clip, trying to trim around pauses, cross-talk, and make moments that took 20 mins in reality seem like they happened in 45 seconds. It was only a matter of time before a little voice in my DM brain started whispering:
🗣️"if you summarize the scene before the big reveal, it will be easier to clip"
🗣️"if you play up this reaction now, it will be easier to edit"
🗣️"retake that line so you can get it clean for the edit"
-- Something had reversed: instead of making TikToks from the show, I was making the show into TikToks. My DMing was being influenced by the content I was generating from it.

Part of this was because I was so thoroughly lost in the sauce -- at the time, a lot of things were going poorly for me, but my show and social media presence was taking off, so even though I'd always intended to do this as a creative hobby, I was slowly being enchanted by the notion of being a full-time creator. I had this vague notion that a "full time" creator would be just like being a part-time creator, except more and I wouldn't have to work. Side note: this is NOT TRUE! Once your rent and groceries depend exclusively on a creative output, that creative output becomes something else. The pressures change. The stakes become so much higher. The audience goes from being a collaborator to an employer. I never went (and will never go) full-time in a creative feild for this reason. My creativity is too important to me to make it my livelihood. And yet…

Have you ever met someone at a party who talks to you like their working on their tight 5? Zingers are over articulated and then there’s a pause to let them land, and it feels like they are waiting for an applause from an invisible audience. When performing in front of live audience, you get this immediate positive feedback, and for some people, this seems to rewire their brain, spill over into conversations that were never meant to be performances.

Content creation is typically not in front of a live audience. Even when I’m livestreaming, the audience is just chat, and while their enthusiasm is invigorating, it’s not quite the same HIGH as hearing people laugh at your joke or gasp at your plot twist. (I did a live D&D show at GenCon and I LOVED IT but something in me was like “oh no, I can’t do this regularly because I will become a worse person”). But with content creation, there’s a chance that anything you post can be seen by millions of people. And when you start to find the rhythm of it, you start to learn what will hit — it’s hard not to let that rhythm play out.

I used to do martial arts, and one thing you learn is how to train your opponent into a rhythm. You start your first few attacks at a slow, constant pace. You follow up with the same combos, 1, 2, 3, until they get the flow of it. Humans are musical beings, we love falling into a rhythm. And then you break rhythm, and your opponent will stumble.
In content creation, it’s so easy to fall into a rhythm once you start to see the patterns. It’s this luring song, asking you to fall into step, and rewarding you when you do.

And maybe that’s fine. Everyone self-censors online, this is just an extension of that. But as someone who tells stories in a format that doesn’t allow editing, I don’t want to edit. I don’t want to think practically about marketing strategies while I’m creative. My creative process needs to be insulated from all that or its to feel corrupted.
This isn't to say every content creator has their mind rotted by it. I think I'm particularly prone to brainrot in this way -- I'm a chronic over-thinker, and I can't do anything a little bit. But I think that, even at a subconscious level, it's very difficult to make creative work without catering to your audience, and with social media, that audience is RIGHT THERE ALL THE TIME and they will let their opinions be known. And humans are social. We are wired to seek acceptance. It's only natural that we will reshape ourselves around that chorus of praise. I still hate it.

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