Dismantle Big Daddy Mainframe

Disentangling yourself from Google and Meta in 2022 does not mean disappearing into the woods with a typewriter. It means rebuilding your digital life around smaller, slower, more intentional systems. Move your conversations off algorithmic timelines and back onto mailing lists, forums, group chats, and personal websites. Replace the infinite feed with RSS. Buy a domain name instead of cultivating a profile. Use local storage whenever possible. Keep your photographs in folders you control. Learn how to make a simple HTML page. Treat every convenience offered by surveillance capitalism as a lease agreement rather than ownership. The “data body” — the shadow-self assembled from clicks, purchases, locations, contacts, and habits — has become more economically valuable than the physical body itself. Escaping that system is therefore not only a technical process, but a psychological one: refusing the demand to constantly render yourself legible to platforms whose business model depended on prediction, extraction, and behavioral control.