quitting the internet

I have decided to permanently quit the internet, for reasons I outlined in my previous post. This post is a log that deals with how I am actually accomplishing this goal.

It is unfortunately not possible to completely go offline. I will need the internet to manage my bank accounts, book flights and other such logistics, and I also need access to national and international messaging apps for a variety of reasons. However, while these are part of the multimedia infrastructure and instrumental in modulating the way you think (managing bank accounts online, for instance, abstracts the idea of money from something concrete to a number on a webpage, and messaging apps ensure instant international connectivity—something completely invalid in the natural world) I do consider them morally seperate from the ‘hijacking’ tools the internet applies: ensuring that you are always in view of yourself, for instance.

my phone

The first step to eliminating internet usage is getting completely off my phone. Unfortunately, this has certain drawbacks.

1. Maps. Obviously, it is possible to navigate without maps, but this requires certain amounts of effort. The reason why maps is one of those features integrated on a cell phone is because you really do need the modularity offered by the cell phone to use it effectively—you can log onto social media in your room (you do not need it while in a car) but maps allows you to navigate quite seamlessly. However, this can be mitigated in my circumstance. The fortunate fact is that I live in Paris and have a vague memory of the entire subway system and most of the city so can perform the ‘broad strokes’ of navigation by myself. If I have a specific goal in mind, then I can potentially accomplish this by using maps before I go to a certain location and then writing down directions. This sounds like a hassle, but I suspect this is one of those skills which gets exponentially better over time to the point that you do not really need maps anymore.
2. Booking Taxis. Unfortunately (although I do not need this on the daily) I think this is one of those situations which requires me to actually keep a regular smartphone handy close by. The fact of the matter is that I travel a lot to places I've never been before, and require access to cabs. However, it looks like this is only the matter when I'm traveling—which isn't all that much if considered on a day-to-day basis; I only travel once every few months, so I can probably whip out a phone whenever I need it.
3. 2FA. I hate 2FA and intend to write a screed on it soon, but unfortunately it's true—I need it all the time for a variety of reasons. There is never any explicit sitation occuring that requires to keep it on me, however, and my new login mechanisms aren't as unwieldy as they used to be (in America my university required me to corroborate with the 2FA client every single time I logged into my email), so this can also be accomplished by ocassionally turning on a smartphone I keep stashed in the basement.

The goal is this: I can keep my regular smartphone (shut down) stashed under the bed to be brought out in case of exceptional circumstances, and can walk around with a regular dumbphone that can't run anything (namely android) on it instead. After some consideration I decided to get a Nokia 2660 Flip, since I've always wanted a flip phone. This pretty much has only calling, messaging, pictures (along with a flashlight and FM Radio, although I'm never going to use that) and an mp3 player, which is really all I need on a phone.

The downside to doing this is largely that I look stupid, especially when I meet new people—it seems that people have become reluctant to the idea of simply sharing their phone numbers immediately, especially to some guy who's painstakingly typing them out on a flip phone which can only message and make regular calls. But I suspect this would be alleviated since I'm not really going to quit messaging apps; to do so will be social suicide, and the point of this experiment is to ensure the exact opposite.

camera

The big problem with not having your phone on you is that you don't have a camera.

I've thought about this, however, and it seems to me that there is pretty much no circumstance in which I will be alone and require a camera. If I'm out with friends, someone else will have a smartphone to take pictures with. If I'm alone and need a camera, I'm probably on a trip, or something, and I would do significantly better with having a legitimate camera on me. I dug out this old sony camera and it still works like a charm, and my MacBook has a nice SD Card slot to back up data.

The one notable exception is that often I need to scan documents or something. For this, I can just use my iPad, which is basically just lying at home all the time, and so is quite unproblematic—I never need to take pictures of documents on the fly.

money

In France, fortunately, everyone just taps their card to pay, so if I have my wallet on me I don't need to worry about money.

This is a significant problem in India, however. The normalized method of payment in India is UPI, which functionally works like Venmo and essentially requires you to have access to a smartphone. There has been some improvement on this front—it looks like there are a lot of new dumbphones which support UPI payments—but it is still an annoying hassle that will have severely negative effects on the world in times to come. It's reached the point where vendors basically refuse to take cash.

social media

Here is stuff I absolutely need to get rid of. Unfortunately, I have accounts on too many of these things.

instagram

This is the one thing I really don't want to deactivate, since it is actually useful. The problem with instagram is solely the stupid recommendation features and the dumb instagram reels—taken as a mechanism to keep in touch with people you know in real life, it's really quite good, and its messaging feature is pretty useful when it comes to, like, dating. Despite being attention-span eating short-form videos, I have also found that reels (if curated correctly) are actually not that bad, either, though they must be quit permanently as well.

Step 1 is to go through my instagram and unfollow everyone who is not someone I know in real life, to ensure that I do not see crap content which does not have to do with connecting with people. This is already something accomplished, because the amount of people I follow is quite large: stupid comedy podcasters, soccer journalists, daily Kanye quote channels, guys who are attempting to become illiterate, the morning routine guy, and so on. By far the worst was cutting access to Nastassja Kinski's private account, however... she never replies to my DMs, but she used to follow me.

Totally, this got me down from about 540 following to 367 following, which meant that the vast majority of my engagement on instagram was with people who I did not know.

Once this was done, I downloaded the distraction-free instagram client which basically disables all features excluding messaging and adding new people, which are the only things I really need. There's a catch, however—I add new people on this with a fair amount of frequency, a significant amount more than I want to knock open my smartphone. The solution here is that I can install cold turkey blocker and block access to all of instagram except two pages on the site:

1. The DM page, which allows me to send messages to people, and
2. The notifications page, which lets me view my notifications. In particular, I will be able to see people who sent me a follow request and follow them back without actually navigating anywhere else on the site. This is a clever solution, because if I meet someone I probably won't have a smartphone on me anyway, and I can instead request them to add me on Instagram, after which I can just add them back. This way I don't need access to the search bar.

Of course, barely using Instagram is a pretty good way to get people's numbers, instead, which is always nicer—generally I hate texting and always prefer to call (since outside of the occasional group chat I really only text to set up calls/real-life meetings), and not carrying a smartphone on me is a pretty acceptable reason to dial people up. They can't get annoyed at someone who doesn't use messaging apps with any amount of frequency.

twitter

I signed up on this a while ago to make friends who share similar interests as me, but I really have just come to the conclusion that this is an irredeemable piece of crap. I nuked my account. These guys are so annoying that it actually takes 30 full days to accomplish this—you can't even immediately get rid of the thing, you have to ensure that you haven't logged in for a whole month before it actually removes all your content, and even then it doesn't actually delete all your tweets! Possibly the worst invention in human history since firearms.

To actually get rid of my tweets, I had to use Tweetdeleter, because there's no native functionality on the Twitter app/website to get rid of all your content. After this, I was able to deactivate my account.

reddit

This is a really annoying one because most of the 'useful' content on the internet is on Reddit these days, since regular forums have all but died out. Because of this, I don't actually have an account on it, but still use it with a fair amount of frequency! Unlike most social media, this one basically allows you to get addicted without ever ensuring participation; at no point in my life have I ever wanted to type out a reddit comment, but it is still probably the thing I am most addicted to, anyway. Of all the things on the internet, Reddit is the most like reality TV, and the things that I consume on here probably cause the most mental damage—reading ridiculous arguments about soccer managers, witnessing people spiraling down into drug use, and reading posts about insane people reacting in neurotic ways (and just generally being losers) while other similarly addled people offer them advice.

There are a couple problems here:

1. I could just block the subreddits which I use too much: random subreddits for hobbies, books, soccer, politics and miscellaneous content like r/redscarepod or r/futurology which exists solely to feed my neurotic and fatalistic tendencies.
2. I could get rid of the site entirely, but then have to deal with horrible SEO-optimized websites which don't actually answer my search queries.

I think the correct answer is #2, and the reason for this is that the vast majority of these 'essential' queries that I make are actually not essential whatsoever—my life could easily go on without ever needing such things, especially because I have a proclivity for endless amounts of doomscrolling.

Using Cold Turkey and Stay Focused, I could keep Reddit off my phone and computer permanently, and I have done this successfully.

The problem is my iPad.

Unlike other social media, I almost exclusively use Reddit when I'm at home, which means that my iPad is a source of danger—I can basically use it at all times. Unfortunately, Apple does not really provide any good mechanisms for permanently locking yourself out of the internet. Ultimately, I found a fix which works about as well as I possibly could make it work.

youtube

Fortunately or unfortunately, I have never really been addicted to YouTube, so cutting it out is not hard. There are only three things I basically need YouTube for:

1. How-to videos. The good thing is that the best how-to videos often appear as snippets on Google search, and can be played with an embedded viewer that doesn't open the actual website.
2. Gym Content, particularly Sam Sulek. Unfortunately, I think I might have to give this up entirely. As much as I like listening to Sam, I really can't think of a way to unblock this without also giving me access to the entirety of YouTube.
3. Vlogbrothers. After doing a bit of searching I realized that they have a podcast I can listen to instead, which is probably better, anyway; I always thought that they would be better as a podcast.

music

I deactivated my Apple Music subscription and got a pair of wired earphones since I'm going to be running a dumbphone with an mp3 player on it. With an SD card, this should give me about a thousand or so songs.

This is very fun, because I will now have to choose what songs to put on my phone, and will have to reload it or use FM Radio every time I want to listen to something else—and since I'm going to be in a non-english speaking country, I will probably be restricted to top 40 music. This is good! I have spent enough time listening to Car Seat Headrest or Deathconsciousness. I suspect I will be much happier listening to Drake.

I am considering the Kanye and Lana discographies, along with some Bruce Springsteen and MGMT. It is nice to not be able to walk around with unlimited amounts of music. Since I don't listen to music at home, I don't see any reason why I would need to block Spotify or Apple music. Since I now have a podcast to listen to, I suspect this is something I could do while sitting at home instead of walking around, making life different. I have never really sat and listened to a podcast as a recreational activity, instead of something I do while, say, walking.

facebook

I don't use Facebook apart from Marketplace, and it is already blocked everywhere on my computer and on my phone, so I am not doing anything to change that.

linkedin

This is also now blocked on my computer, and again, I have no reason to actually unblock it, ever, because I am not looking for a job (nor have I ever used LinkedIn to look for jobs).

whatsapp, signal, etc

I have decided to keep these messaging apps on my computer and on my iPad, because I will need them to talk to my parents and friends across continents.

However, there is no reason I need to walk around with a smartphone just to use these. I do not need to call people who don't live close to me at all times—any emergency can almost always be deferred to the end of the day. In case there is a significant problem, I have memorized their phone numbers, and can dial an international call; whatever amount of money that takes is offset by the fact that it's an emergency.

discord

I deleted the app everywhere, but did not disable my account. I doubt I'm going to use this for any extended period of time but if I do I'll just nuke the account. I've never used this extensively—it has nothing on it that makes me want to keep it beyond WhatsApp or Signal, except for the ability to watch movies or soccer games remotely. Although I used to have people to do this with I don't really have anyone now, and if something happens and I do suddenly need to watch movies with someone remotely I'll just install the app again. It's too unintuitive and full of actual children for me to spend any real amount of time on.

letterboxd

This was the social media I was most unhappy to get rid of because I probably had the healthiest relationship with it. However, part of my screed against social media was also an attempt to get rid of consuming copious amounts of useless information, and that included movies. The problem is that I'm not really opposed to watching movies altogether; I just want to limit my consumption of them from my peak of 200 a year down to something like 30 or 40. A movie every other week is fine.

My main goal was to get rid of annoying discourse surrounding movies, which is also what I was primarily using twitter for. While I don't think this is necessarily bad, the way this manifests is quite toxic in the literal sense of the word—this stuff poisons your brain.

Unfortunately I had a bunch of good stuff on my Letterboxd account, including many reviews and pieces of writing that I enjoyed. My solution was to simply export my Letterboxd data to a CSV and leave the account as-is, while using all the techniques I already had at my disposal to block the website.

I also had a paid Patron subscription, which I canceled.

All I really needed was the watchlist and a method to search through the reviews, anyway, which I backed up.

goodreads

I have no love for Goodreads, and have found better ways to track my books. I nuked my account.

this blog

The good thing about this blog is that no one is reading it :)

I can just keep access to this via GitHub and keep pushing changes; I don't even need to really open a browser to write stuff on this. I have no plans to stop writing.

my ipad

There are apps available to block stuff on iOS, but by and large they are quite unhelpful—they rely largely on Apple's native screen time ‘content restrictions’ which can be easily bypassed, because the only level of security is a 4-digit passcode.

The ONLY technique that I was able to determine worked sufficiently well was the Apple Configurator 2 App—this is a content management system for iOS devices that are linked to a particular organization. If you have ever been given a ‘school’ iPad that seems to be all blocked and stuck exclusively to a single app, the way this was established was by using the Apple Configurator App, which requires you to physically connect your iPad to a Mac computer to override. The app allows you to essentially customize your iPad to whatever degree you want.

What I did was set up my iPad as a ‘supervised device’ (this involved completely erasing everything that was on it, however—so beware) and then basically removed Safari, a whole bunch of other browsers and apps, and added a series of websites as content restrictions. Furthermore, to remove the setup profile, I added a 34-digit passcode which I sent to a friend and told him to never reveal to me under any unexceptional circumstance.

The reason why I was able to do this is because I really only need three things on my iPad:

1. A way to transfer files onto it, which I could through Drive.
2. A way to recieve and send emails, and I kept Gmail on the device.
3. A note-taking app—I use Goodnotes—that supports Apple Pencil.

This is ALL I do on my iPad, I do not require it for any other reason; a nice perk is that I was able to keep WhatsApp and Signal on it as well, along with some Rideshare apps in case I was feeling risque and wanted to travel somewhere without my phone.

The main deal is that I no longer have a browser on my iPad, so I can't do anything stupid on it.

Ideally, I could just do the same thing to my phone instead of buying a new dumbphone altogether. However the form factor of my Phone makes it pretty easy to just plug it into my computer and reset it—it's better to just not have the phone handy at all. I also don't have an iPhone, but an Android phone, and I'm not really certain how to do such things on it; besides, I don't know what additional functionalities are going to be limited by the fact that I don't have a browser on my iPad, and I don't want to take any risks like that on my phone—I still need everything to be accessible if really required.

This is the series of steps I had to take to block access to my iPad permanently. I don't think you can actually do it without a MacBook, so take care.

1. I downloaded Apple Configurator 2 from the App Store.
2. I connected my iPad physically to my MacBook via a USB-C cable. The device popped up on configurator.
3. I erased my iPad via the prompt menu, and further removed the activation lock. You need to do this to set up the iPad as a supervised device—since it already has stuff on it, you can't set it up as a new supervised device. The activation lock is a mechanism to lock your iPad in case it gets lost; you need to disable it since you're basically setting up an entirely new device. You can do this on the iCloud Find My Device menu. Mine didn't have any stuff on it, but you should probably back up your data to iCloud and download it onto your MacBook.
4. The iPad will restart with factory settings. Go through the setup, but don't back up your data; this will restore your old iPad.
5. When it prompts you to enter an Apple ID, set up your device as a supervised device first, then log in, otherwise it will again try to restore your old iPad.
6. You should now be able to back up your data onto your iPad, while ensuring that it remains supervised.
7. On the Configurator menu, set up a new ‘profile’—this is basically a set of rules ensuring what you can and can't do. Make sure to make your profile unremovable without an administrator password, otherwise you'll just remove it. Then add a really long and annoying password and write it down somewhere or give it to a friend.
8. You should now be able to use the menu to make whatever changes you want to your iPad. I removed a bunch of browsers and then the App Store, leaving behind only the bare-bones things I needed. I also blocked a bunch of websites so any loopholes wouldn't work. Essentially all I can do on my iPad now is import files via Drive and then write on them via Goodnotes; it's basically a glorified notebook. I can also send and recieve emails to work with documents and use some messaging/rideshare apps.
9. If you're really determined, you might plug in your iPad again and try to reset the profile. There's a simple way of preventing this: use Cold Turkey to block access to the Configurator app on your Mac; it's much easier to block things on a Mac since it's a real OS that allows you to do whatever you want on it.
10. To keep things ‘technically’ usable, keep the block on except between 0413 and 0414. That gives you a one-minute window at 4 in the morning to reset the Configurator app, in case you're having some kind of real emergency.

what am i going to do now

I suspect this will give me many additional hours of newfound time.

I have no idea what I am going to do with this time. Quite possibly I will do absolutely nothing—I don't have productivity issues, and am happy with the amount I work. I suspect that this is going to be a problem at first. Boredom does not really breed happy thoughts, although I will probably start spending significantly more time at work or outside instead of my house; constantly looking for things to do, people to talk to. Or I will just read an infinite amount of books.

Eventually, I suspect that my brain will be ‘rewired’ to the point that I can start doing meditative hobbies for extended periods of time.

I do not know what this will achieve, but I am somewhat eager to find out.