Life is tough, especially now. While the internet used to be a fun place where you got to hang out for a few hours every once in a while, now it’s a place where we have to be because that’s where everything is nowadays—it’s almost impossible to do regular banking in person any more. So I decided to put together a list of strategies to help you survive life on today’s internet.

1. Delete Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
2. Sign up for Mastodon and Bluesky. Do not use your real name.
3. Turn off the features where they recommend posts and accounts to you. Find someone you like and respect—an author, a musician—and see who they follow and who they repost. You’ll find plenty of good content on your own without having it shoved down your throat.
4. Do not follow your friends on social media. That’s what texting, phone calls, and going to the bookstore together are for.
5. Do not follow anyone from work on social media, especially if they are above you in the org chart. If you know some of your coworkers are on social media, block them before they find you. This will save you a world of trouble down the road.
6. Do not engage with trolls on social media. That BLOCK button exists for a reason. 
7. Seriously, do not engage with trolls. People can be wonderful, but they can also be stupid, ignorant, angry, whiny, petulant, egotistical, sexist, racist, homophobic, and just plain wrong (even though they think they are right). These are not people to waste your time on, because you can’t save them, and there’s no way you’re going to win an argument with them. The more you argue with them, the more they think they are right. It takes practice to just reach for that block button automatically, but I managed to get there, and so can you. I’m not the Jesus of the internet. I’m not here to save anybody.
8. Do not install shopping apps on your phone. All that will happen is that you will get notifications all day long like “This is still in your cart!” and “Look what we found for you!” They are just trying to separate you from your money. If you need to buy something online, make up your mind what you want or need ahead of time, and then get on your computer and visit their website in a web browser. Shop online like it’s 1999.
9. Seriously, do you really need minute-to-minute tracking of your order? In the old days, we used to pop an order form in the mail and then wait six to eight weeks for our order to show up. If we survived waiting two months for our tighty-whities to arrive from Sears, you can go two days without knowing where your scented candle from Amazon is.
10. Also, Fuck Walmart.
11. Okay, if there is that one grocery store near you that has a great app that lets you shop for sales and gives you huge coupons and you promise only to buy what you actually need, go ahead and install that one. Food is expensive, so I get it. Make the most of the app and don’t buy what you don’t need.
12. Do not feel like you have to follow people back if they follow you. People post all sorts of stuff on the internet and only the tiniest fraction of it will in any improve your life. If someone follows you, take a look at their feed. If all they post seems silly, inane, or stupid to you, remember that you have no obligation to follow them back just because they followed you. (Sad, but true: Some people calculate their self-worth by how many people follow them on social media, and will follow random people in the hope that they will follow them back. These are probably the last people that should be on the internet.)
13. Learn how RSS feeds work and install an feed reader on your computer. (I like Liferea, which works on Linux. If you are on Windows, get off Windows.) If you find someone with an interesting blog or website (yep, these things still exist on the internet; you’re soaking in one now), add their RSS feed to your feed reader and then you can sift through their recent posts without ads and without distraction, and find what interests you. (This is, for instance, how I found out about the death of Michael Adler. It’s also how I found out about Michael Adler.)
14. Turn off your computer. Read a book. Go outside. Leave your phone inside the house. You’ll be fine. Listen to bees. Look at flowers. Feel the sun on your shoulders. Live your life. Breathe.

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