I didn’t reinvent myself so much as I started being honest about my identity.

When I was younger, I was very talkative and social, and I was punished for it in elementary school because it was disruptive. This is probably because I was surrounded by family and felt comfortable talking to anyone about anything. Over time, I started to become reclusive and have a severe fear of authority. Eventually, my friend group started shrinking in high school until I had what felt like nothing. I stopped attending school and slept for six months during my senior year. Eventually, I started returning from my shell and interacting with people online.

Since I was still in my depressive state, I thought it was all too good to be true, and I faked my death online because I thought no one would care and it would be an easy transition into something else. I was very, very wrong. People I had met online started creating memorials and trying to contact people I knew IRL to give them condolences. It was the first time that I realized people liked the person I was unfiltered.

After that, I got my GED and moved to a new town where no one knew me to go to college. While there, I decided to be the person I was and not the person I had been trying to be because I thought that was what people wanted. Even then, I was introverted until COVID happened, and I fell back into depression due to a lack of human connections.

I’m glad to have learned this all now, but I wish I had known it 20 years ago.

You can subscribe to another community by visiting {yourinstance.com}/c/{communityname}@{otherinstance.com}

For example: https://beehaw.org/c/[email protected]

Have you tried Photopea? It’s a free web app that’s a dead-ringer for Photoshop, and has a pretty decent responsive mobile interface. If you’re looking for a Photoshop-like experience on your phone, it’s probably your best bet.

Honestly, using https://wefwef.app as a web app is hard to beat right now. It works very smoothly, and I finally understand why all the iOS users mourn the loss of Apollo so hard. Granted, using an iOS-esque interface on an Android device is a bit odd, but the gestures and the layout are just chef’s kiss.

The biggest issue with it is that it’s getting hammered on the primary domain, so I’ll probably move to self-host it sooner than later.

Couple this with the idea that Elon is proving you can do something drastically unpopular to increase profit, and most users still won’t abandon the platform. Tech companies, traditionally, move quickly off of FOMO to make a profit. Elon has brazenly validated many choices that other companies have generally considered risky up until his point.

I would expect this to get even worse now that spez has doubled down. Many people talk about how Elon and spez are ruining their platforms, but at least for now, they have seemingly gotten away with it. Some users have migrated to other platforms, but many have stuck around.