What is Freedom?
What is freedom, really? The ability to do what we want, when we want so long as we are not hurting others in the process. Right?
So why is it as a community we are more prone to making our actual daily lives harder for the sake of “principles”?
Now is this freedom? Or slavery?
I see it time and time again, people trying to work with Linux, de googled graphine phones and more only to be severely limited by what they can actually do with their devices. Or people who forgo the digital age all together only to to be extremely lonely and isolated due to lack of connection because the reality is, like minded people are literally far and few between spread worldwide save for a few pockets here and there. And a lot of times, being that we come into these ideas angry at the state because of some sort of injustice, we aren’t exactly emotionally healthy and great with community. Some of us are, but again the healthy ones are few and far between.
I’ve been criticised for my love of Apple products over the last few years. I have the latest iPhone, an apple watch, an iPad and a Macbook. I love my Apple ecosystem, why? It just works. They seamlessly merge and flow to make sure I have access to everything I need to be productive all at once.
I am also simultaneously praised for my efficiency and ability to get a lot done in a short time. My friends, this duality is not a coincidence.
My Story: I tried, I promise.
When I was a baby anarchist, I promptly wiped my Windows computer and installed Linux in the form of Ubuntu. Then when that stopped working and the inevitable reformat came I tried Mint, and then Fedora and about a dozen other distros of Linux. I bounced around for years, and then eventually settled on Ubuntu again, simply accepting that I would spend a lot of time tinkering.
First to install and get it dialed in with use of the terminal, then to continually do “maintinence” when updates would inevitably break and slow my machine. I planned for biyearly “overhauls” of my machine where I literally pulled off my precious documents to a hard drive, reformat and then spent 3 days tinkering to get it back to where I started.
I was spending 2-3x as long tinkering to get it to function at a basic level than I was actually working. As a result I was less effective. And like vegans who tell you “you didn’t do it right” when you go back to eating meat, I have met many a “linux vegan” who insisted I simply did not do Linux right. I didn’t do the regular maintinence, and I should have learned how to use the terminal and nothing would have went wrong. And and and and and…
Nevermind I spent my first 2 of 12 years using Linux extensively watching videos, tutorials, reading literal books on the way Linux works.
I don’t regret the time I spent using Linux. I also don’t regret abandoning it completely.
FREEEDOMMMM! Actually.
In 2020, water got poured on my laptop and I was forced to beg Henza to let me use his Macbook air. I was amazed at how….simple it was.
I got my first mac, which was donated a few months later and a few months after that got my first Macbook that I promptly beat the shit out of for 3 nearly 4 years.
Why did I upgrade last year? Did my beloved Mac die on me like the planned obscelence I am told to be afraid of? Nope, I wanted a bigger screen. My first macbook was in perfect working condition but as a web designer its better to have a bit bigger screen to be sure your designs accurately display on many sized screen. What looks great on an 11 or 13 inch screen might look dumb as hell on a 32 inch. A 15 inch screen seems to be the perfect happy medium.
Since then I’ve slowly collected various items in the apple family and my productivity? Its only gone up. I spend about 20 minutes updating my computer every three months. The rest of the time? I work. I don’t fight with my machine to get it to do something simple. I also, gasp, don’t use brave browser.
And now I hear regular complaints from my friends and colleagues about how they are struggling spending many hours trying to do simple things on their devices because they use Linux, or degoogled android. I had a friend ask me to call him an Uber cause he couldn’t do it for himself. I see people come to Anarchapulco frustrated they can’t get around because they refuse to use phones or phones that have access to things like maps, uber or other time and labor saving applications.
I see people unable to get simple websites to function because of an addiction to Brave Browser, which breaks the functionality of many modern websites because of the privacy settings. Yes you can tinker with the settings, but from a customer service standpoint, about 75 percent of the people who are writing in to say that Anarchapulco’s website doesn’t work are using Brave and when they switch and try any other browser it starts working as expected. And before you tell me to just design websites in a way that allows brave to work with it, I’d have to remove most things that make these sites work including stripe payment software because that uses trackers to function, which are blocked by Brave.
Is “privacy” a psyop?
The tinfoil hat version of me cant help but wonder, are these “tools” for privacy here to make us actually more free? Or are they psyops to make us unefficient and as a result ineffective? Time will tell. Now to be clear, there are some actual really important usecases for Linux, servers and things like that. But the average joe trying to write emails and maybe edit a video here and there? Not sure its needed, nor do most of us have the tech knowledge needed to be effective.
I see friends growing increasingly frustrated because they are experiencing issues where things that used to work on their computers, simply don’t anymore. Or man, this google sheet is loading SO SLOWLY because they’re using brave browser on a linux machine. Or my wifey for lifey whos well meaning husband handed her a brand new degoogled phone that she couldn’t use during Anarchapulco one year because of need to access to whatsapp and other apps that just didnt seem to function right on the degoogled device. The intent was there, but she ended up using a phone with a broken screen because the functionality wasn’t.
But what about privacy? Should we let the man see what we are doing? The reality is many of the people I see struggling and suffering with Linux are content creators. People with outward public facing personas. Struggling to edit videos that people are going to see on youtube anyway for the sake of freedom.
I’ve been there. And I won’t go back. If the FBI, the government or whoever wants to watch me write these public blogs, edit videos that go on youtube anyway, make websites or watch me write emails for my job at Anarchapulco which is a public facing business, more power to em. Enjoy yourself my dudes. The reality is the only “illegal activity” I partake in is my legal status in general, which is already all over HBO. I lost any resemblance of privacy when that went live and I had a choice. Hide under a rock in the woods, or enjoy my life and become more efficient and effective.
So are your principles getting in the way of your freedom? Curious to your thoughts. If you feel attacked, please don’t. The desire to try things to have more personal freedom is natural. But it comes down to priorities. If efficiency is one of yours, you might want to ditch the Linux degoogled stuff.