I’m a few miles up 35 and finding the only real utility Reddit provides other than killing time is /r/Austin, and even there … well, I get NWS alerts on my phone, take transit and don’t lose pets, so the level of usefulness may be more imagined than real.

At the same time, the initial reasons I joined Reddit other than link aggregation aren’t what they once were. I’ve found that DIY projects I learn about on Reddit and then have questions about details on get zero responses, and the communities I joined years ago have been so overrun by people who want karma over discussion that there’s not much value there, either.

Using Google to search Reddit can be useful, but then you get a great detailed post from four years ago and can’t do anything with it if you have further questions. The thread is locked on account of age, and people get pissed if you post a new thread on the same topic that links to the original.

What this API fiasco has done is bring into specific relief where Reddit has already failed and turned all of those into a cohesive narrative that was lacking up to this point. I’d heard of Tildes but not Lemmy until this week, and already my work internet use has switched from RSS then Reddit to Beehaw then RSS.

I guess I needed to get hit over the head with just how bad things had gotten via external forces to overcome inertia. Interestingly, two months ago, I was running Windows on all my computers, and I finally snapped on how invasive notifications and forced-app shenangians had gotten.

The stages of grief may end with acceptance where people are involved, but they certainly don’t need to with technologies and platforms. I’m starting to better understand the grousing I wrote off as narcissistic woe-the-hell-is-me was actually a congregation of coal-mine canaries.