Making the internet a place I go to

2026-08-01

I’m addicted to constant micro-doses of dopamine. I have a handheld device, always ready to gratify any need for stimulation. If it’s not charged, I get stressed. If I go to the bathroom without it, I feel empty. When my mind has to strain itself a little to either perform a task, process a difficult thought, or reflect upon something, my phone is ready to relieve me of this suffering. It delivers me memes, rage bait, and thirst traps in order to entertain me and sedate me so that apps like Instagram can serve me targeted ads. Imagine your grocery store force-feeding you opium so that they can tell you what to buy while you’re sedated. It’s how it feels at this point, and it’s not good.

The problem is that I really enjoy being online. For one, I have many friends around the world that I’ve picked up during my studies. I miss them, and Instagram allows me to engage with their lives, stay in touch and reconnect. It has enabled some of my most important friendships. But it comes with the cost of time lost to scrolling.

What if the internet became more like a recreational drug than an addictive substance? We could log in, have our fun for some time, then leave. We could long to return to it, like we long for another episode of our favourite show. I came across a video essay by the YouTuber Sarah Davis Baker titled “The Internet Used to Be a Place”. She argued that the internet used to be a place we had to go to. We would engage actively with it for a limited amount of time. Then we would log off and leave the place.

The video essay is also a love letter to the old, chaotic, quirky and free internet, where sites like Geocities enabled normal people to build their own pages. Check out Cameron’s World for an archival collage of what that was like. The heartbreaking thing is that this was taken away from us. Not by passing trends, but by corporate greed. And what we got instead was virtual opium.

Yet the internet has promise still. It has, in my opinion, been instrumental in the rapid liberation of queer people that we have seen the past two decades (despite the current regression that trans people in particular are facing). The internet is a window into the whole world, which allows us to see what is possible out there. It shows us that things can be different and that life doesn’t have to be lived a certain way. This can inspire us and enable the imagination required to make change in the world. To many queer people it was a lifeline out of a suffocating world of limitations, and into the world of the possible.

I want to reclaim a part of this promise for myself. As I’ve pointed out before, this page is part of that. I aim to gain more agency in the way I engage with the online world. But what good does a silly blog do if I still spend an hour watching reels in bed like I did this morning? Leaving me sadder than when I started and with no real memory of what I watched.

I’m removing Instagram from my phone and taking a longer break, accessing it only through a browser on my computer. Posts will be published here instead, with some pictures and thoughts from the past month. The risk is that it becomes harder to stay connected with friends who live far away. But I’m willing to bet on more meaningful connections. Instead of spontaneous likes and comments, I can reach out the old way. I feel that one phone call to catch up often fuels a friendship for months.

I will give this a shot and replace small hits of dopamine with more meaningful connection. And hopefully, I can make Christernet a “place I go to”.

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