I am finally done with social media.

That’s been a long time coming. I have been on and off social media for many years, and I think I am finally done.

I started feeling my despair toward them a few years ago, starting with Instagram. I always loved the idea of a place where everyone shared personalized content on their feed. It was supposed to be a photo journal of your life. You could keep up with what friends were doing and follow some photographers and filmmakers.

It kind of worked for a while. Until Meta (owner of Instagram) decided to pick another strategy of squeezing every last bit of your attention toward their app. They started doing everything in their power to hook you as fast as possible and then keep you glued to the screen as long as possible.

The Stories feature was the first step in that direction. It was intentionally developed so you MUST look at whatever everyone else was doing. Otherwise, it disappeared. Then it was reinforced by TikTok‑inspired Reels. The Reels tab was designed to quickly feed you one quick sensational video after another. The sole purpose of that was to glue your eyeballs to the screen.

Instagram doesn’t care about creativity or self‑expression. Creators are not their customers. Businesses are. And businesses want that sweet attention for ads.

I was on and off IG for a few years until I finally stopped using it last year for good.

I was never (thankfully) seriously using TikTok, so I avoided this plague. But as with IG Reels, I went through a difficult journey with YouTube Shorts. I can’t say I watched them a lot, but they were always in my life because I watch YouTube a lot, and I create videos for this platform myself. As a creator, it was immediately clear that this is a huge focus for YouTube. Which is nothing but sad to me, as I genuinely love this platform and the creativity it always promoted. But yet again, another platform was falling into the same pitfall.

After some thinking, however, I realized that it shouldn’t be this way. If my goal is creativity and providing value for people, I shouldn’t force myself to be a slave to the algorithms and big corporations. I settled on the idea to continue creating long‑form content no matter what, and kept distancing myself from YT Shorts.

The only exception I’ve made is for the series I call "Monday coffee." I am making them specifically to slow down people’s Shorts feeds, take a breather, and discuss one thing I’m presenting in each week’s episode. This is my answer to short‑form content. I turned it into anti‑algorithm short video podcasts. And I’ve been enjoying making those shorts, too, as they keep me grounded and disciplined.

Lastly, there was text‑based social media, where I’d stayed the longest: Twitter (or how it now stupidly calls itself "X"). I had always had a special connection to this place. It’s where I learned a lot about the lifestyle I want to live. It’s where I met developers, digital nomads, and indie hackers. It’s where I met an amazing community, even meeting some people offline.

Unfortunately, after the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk (although it started even before that), this place became absolutely insufferable. I thought TikTok was the king of promoting the most ridiculous and controversial type of content just to keep you watching, but X seems to have mastered it on a new level.

In the last few years, the platform turned great communities into a pit with the most controversial, polarizing, rage‑baiting type of content you can imagine. And even people I liked and respected before started either following these rules and posting only "hot takes". Or they just became the recycling machines reposting the same thoughts and ideas lacking originality, just because it brought the most views.

It became even worse after AI gained its popularity, and more and more tools started promoting writing AI content. To me, the last nail in the coffin was Typefully releasing a feature that will imitate your persona and generate AI tweets for you. All of that completely killed the individuality and community parts I loved so much about Twitter.

So as the last social media in my life, I am done with X too. Now, I am completely off the hook ;)

After some time enjoying my freedom, I started thinking about how to make the Internet feel good again. I definitely recommend watching an incredible video by the CEO of Patreon, Jack Conte, who is asking the same question.

I definitely don’t have all the answers yet, but I started by both creating and consuming content more intentionally.

Here are two rules I set for myself:

Always make content that is fueled by my personal beliefs, creative passion, and value you can provide to real humans. Do not focus on algorithms, hooks, funnels, and other business metrics.
Consume content intentionally by the creators you discover and feel connected with, instead of allowing algorithms to dictate and "tailor" your taste.

It already led to curating how I consume YouTube videos. And since I no longer get my content from social media, I started creating my RSS and newsletters feed again. Honestly, it feels liberating and enjoyable. I feel much more connected to creators, compared to the superficial feed consumption.

With this first post, I am also intending to return to writing myself. I am a type of person who likes to share, but I want to do it on my own terms, at my own pace and place, and it should look and feel like me. So I am starting by bringing this blog to life.

As my main distribution system, I picked Substack. All the posts from this blog will be reposted and distributed there in the form of a newsletter. I am also planning to occasionally do photo dumps, making my own photo feed, since IG failed to do so.

If you’re tired of social media and big corporations turning creativity into junk fast food, join the journey. I will be talking about this topic a lot as it deeply concerns me. I also love to make content about a better and free life, money, travel, and life abroad.

The two places where you can (intentionally) find my content:

Videos on my YouTube channel (only long‑form content + Monday coffee series)
My writing at this blog. You can follow it via Substack newsletter, or directly via RSS (e.g. on Feedly).

See you soon.

Written on a couch in my living room in Zwolle.