It was before I really knew about the fediverse, so when I read about how it was able to federate I didn’t really fully understand it but I thought it was this new radical thing that could revolutionize the internet.

I didn’t really discover the fediverse proper until I found matrix and lemmy, and the word kept popping up until I finally read about it.

I always considered myself tech unsavvy, but I now know that was because I’ve spent my whole life being gaslit by proprietary tech that’s virtually unusable because of the corporate obsession with control, and deliberate obfuscation of settings. I just kept despairing about privacy infringements and bad UIs, and felt resigned to that being the norm, so I avoided technology as much as I could. I didn’t truly understand FOSS and why it’s so important until maybe less than a year ago. Anything that sounded like tech jargon just kinda went over my head.

And then I found Linux and read a whole lot about it, got really excited to try it, and eventually got a computer with Endeavour. Now I’m in love with it. All my life, I thought I hated computers, but it turns out I just hated Windows (and Mac, hated that too).

I feel reborn, like there’s so much potential ahead now, so much to learn and explore. Sure, maybe tech jobs are dying out. I’ll never get a job as a software engineer, even if I learn programming. But outside of that I mean, pursuing tech as a hobby, there’s just a whole new world opening up for me, and it’s cause I finally opened that door labeled “FOSS”

Back when meta was pushing threads a lot of lemmy was suggesting blue sky as the “safe” alternative. I thought it wasn’t corporate at that point, though I never looked into it. At the time I thought federating was proof a site was one of the “good guys.” Lots of us here aren’t really techie, and we’re just bumbling along picking stuff up over time, with none of this as a priority, just trying to take baby steps towards a safer, more private net experience.