original art animation by me
2025 Internet Ruined Me, I’m Glad
This year I got beaten by internet, and I’m fucking glad it happened. My return to world wide weird after I retracted myself from the general internet post-pandemic. Here, I documented my own internet journey for the love of the game, or in case I’m gone unexpectedly, someone, somewhere carries the memory of my journey.
Internally, internet has always been a warzone for me. It has made me want to end myself more than my own suffering ever did. But this place has always had a special place in my head down to my heart, a bond driven by childhood joys and heartbreak as I am adulting. I just putting my internet existence background here.
February of this year I showed up on the internet when it was already at the edge of death. Starting from literal ZERO, I had no circle, no friends, I came as fresh determined outsider. Fortunately I was in my obsessed phases, for the sake of momentum, I decide to full dive into networks and turn my trauma + anxiety into the thrill.
At first, just showing up online felt like standing in the middle of an apocalypse desert. Bots, scammers, grifters, bruh things on every corner. Even when I met account with thousands follower, it still felt… hollow, where tf is everyone?
But that didn’t last long for me. After spending time inside internet abyss, reply guying on timelines, someone eventually found me. Just a simple cold DM complimenting my banner pulled me out of the pit and helped me find other real accounts, a flesh human behind. Thankful for that, it carved into my long-lasting memory. Shoutout to jesx.dev!
After entering the network, being active on Xitter, and having oomfies I could talk to, share with, and discuss the same interests with, a connection emerged, and I started to feel hopium inside my veins tickling, maybe internet is not really that dead.
Another one experience that carved on my eternal memory: I received chocolate and clothes from San Francisco California! Like, whatt? I’m in rural Indonesian mountains, and someone gifted me chocolate and a customized pokemon card!? Just because I exist here and tried to make oomfies??? How wholesome is that!
Being less alone in this dead space is not that bad I guess, hehe.
Beyond that, over the past 11 months has taught me many values about how insane this time is. The pace of technological advancement is nothing like before. The rapid exponential graph of AI benchmark whether it’s SoTA and open source, as described in Karpathy article “summoning ghosts” is no kidding metaphor.
I enjoy observing internet responses to AI, learn and zooming out to see how the world reacts to a shifting paradigm. It’s chaotic and unknown, terrifying and thrilling.
I try to fiddling my smooch brain to understand it with many perspectives: tech, creativity, art, philosophy, research, science, religion, and memes. I’ve never felt this overwhelmed just by watching where we’re heading. Whether bloom or doom, this situation is incredibly intriguing to monitor.
I’ve seen broad phenomena around this. From AI psychosis hitting people close to me (which is scary shit), to the contrary, a wave of butlerian jihad, or simply snapping back to reality, everything is still the same: people living slice-of-life days, in my place, farmer are still planting potatoes, rice, and cabbage with their chill buffalo.
About existing on social media, I have to admit, it sucks being good. Being genuine feels horrible. Being sincere feels like sacrificing energy just to suffer alone. And virtue signaling is an ecstatic drug.
When I see someone with small audience seriously write long, insightful posts, they don’t attract any eyes. But those who ride bandwagons and create repetitive noise get applauded by the echoes. The value of caring becomes carelessly ignored.
But that itself made me think: giving kindness alone has always been hard, regardless of history. No matter how advanced convenience becomes, taking is always easier than giving.
The most important lesson this year narrowed down to attention. What you give it to, what you prioritize, what’s happen in your head. “Attention is all you need” feels like mantra for both human and machine.
Existing within a network of attention means effects always haunt you. If you want to stand, there’s nothing else but becoming strong enough to ignore and be ignored. I won’t deny that my mental state got trapped in a hivemind for a while. A place of belonging turned into a prison, which is suck.
I reached my personal goal of 1,000 followers. And you know what? I hate it. I’m disgusted by that accomplishment, it feels uneasy like choking my own throat. Those numbers give me more irony than celebration. But being honest, wanting a thousand followers used to be my dream. Still learning to be grateful for it, I have to accept it, and try to give value to the numbers I got. Thank you is the only right phrase for someone who takes the time to press the follow button.
Thank you for believing in me.
If I take time to feel, surface level mainstream internet definitely tastes bland and bleak. But I don’t want to be that doomer. I want to spark a soulful existence. So I’m deadserious about building my internet existence.
For the past quarter month, I’ve been hyperfocused over a new computing paradigm. Thanks to a fumble of Microsoft and Windows bluescreen, I jumped into terminal and declarative ecosystem with Nix and NixOS. You can see my progress on my linux journey here.
I built this web earlier this year, slowly refining how I want to stay. Self-hosted and expanding my independent infrastructure with Nix, I can’t afford a proper homelab yet (for now, doing it with my cheap Panasonic laptop and a VPS), making sure it will grow over time. I’m building the foundation of my existence at the root level. And this experimenting website is my will and my proof.
That’s how deadserious I take the internet pill, not for anything else but existence itself.
I want to exist as “me” an idea of a soul. Not me as my title, not me as my output, not me as what I can do, but me as me… It’s hard to jot into words, but the question “Is it me?” is helping me define what “me” is… ummm get it? Don’t worry cyberspace is a weird place, I know. My intention was simply to exist on the internet before it becomes an uninhabitable place. No more, no less.
Yea, 2025 internet broke me bad. My plan to run an ultra at the end of this year got slumped. I became one of those hikineet, going crazy in front of my puter. But I’m fucking glad I did it. Fucking proud I took the first step to overcome my fear, to face that huge wall and see the beyond. This time, it gives me a little goosebump.
I hate being devastated by the network, be freed, dance in the dark. Those insanity are pals to me, don’t ever-ever dare to touch them you stinky metrics. Not to expect anything from the system, but to exist, simply exist, is the most beautiful thing spirit can experience. I won’t let you distract me, to dim, to die is only my foes.
2026, I pray that I may create,
I pray that I may still exist.