It's not that hard to leave the big web behind
This last month I've jumped into the deep end of self hosting and home-lab-ing. In large part this is a piece of my ongoing efforts to stop relying on a lot of the big internet services many have come to rely on. Another part though was wanting to see how much of those conveniences I actually need at the end of the day.
I'll often catch myself in the mindset of "oh well I definitely can't live without (google drive, spotify, etc.)". Surprisingly though I've quickly found that I really don't need, or at this point even want, most of them. It's pretty damn easy to spin up an alternative yourself.
This post is not going to be a comprehensive guide to self hosting (I will be working on spinning up more thorough content on it upcoming as time allows); hell I'm not even going to dive that deep into what I'm currently running. However, I want this to be a brief spark of encouragement that in the modern computing world we are far from stuck with the enshittification that web 2.0 and silicon valley hath wrought. You just need an old computer lying around and the will to learn.
I think we can make the internet our own. Make it fun again. Make it weird again. We just have to build it ourselves and stop tricking ourselves into the lie that we "need" the walled gardens and modern services. There's almost always an open source alternative. There's almost always a very thorough tutorial and a kindhearted community out there willing to help. It'll take up more of your time and it might even take some gasp learning. But the rewards of owning your data and having some fun along the way are well worth the headaches.
My goal going forward the next few weeks is to detail out the services I've found useful so far and how I'm using them. So if you like that kind of thing maybe give me a lil RSS sub. Godspeed soldiers and build a better internet. #selfhosting #thinking