< I'm new to the smolnet and having an existential crisis

~starbreaker

As somebody who has a day job in tech making CRUD apps I think you might be overthinking things just a bit. There's absolutely nothing stopping you from dumping your parasocial media accounts and going all in on geminispace if you want. I tried it myself and found it wasn't for me; I'm spoiled by the ease of use web-hosting companies like Dreamhost and NearlyFreeSpeech.net offer for DIY websites; so I use Emacs Org Mode as my SSG and push to my host with a makefile and rsync.

But whether you do a small website or a gemini capsule as long as you have an Atom feed you can still participate in webrings and aggregators like Nightfall City. As for chucking out your laptop; I just spent the evening jotting down notes for a new novel in a fancy notebook with a fountain pen. The only way I could get more barebones would be with a pack of disposable ballpoints and a stack of marble composition books from Costco. The corporate-friendly internet sucks.

It's spyware as far as the eye can see. None of us can fix it. But exit is always a legitimate option. Let the normies have the corporate-friendly web. We'll make as many smolnets as we need.

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