used to be very into reddit in my edgelord high schooler years. at some point it dawned on me that the general vibe there is pretty negative, at least on the main feed there’s prolly some lovely little subreddit communities out there. I started to realize that I didn’t enjoy the experience of being on the site, the memes felt very self-referential (making memes about memes for the sake of making more memes, it didn’t make for very stimulating content), and the interest based communities felt more argumentative than friendly discussion. it felt like I spent hours scrolling to find something that would hold my interest beyond the malaise of r/me_irl type posts and the same repeat r/askreddit threads.
eventually i figured out that i could find what i liked about reddit elsewhere (got really into youtube video essays) and that I felt better using my time differently. had a similar thought process with twitter a few years ago too. i still have a reddit account for the few times it pays to find niche info on specific subreddits, but I haven’t browsed regularly in probably 8 years.
May 17, 2024
Related Recs
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It was daunting at first to leave a place I regularly posted on for 10+ years and made so many connections through, but I don’t even think about it at this point. It became such a cesspool of bad vibes in the past couple years.
Mar 6, 2024
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Went cold-turkey off IG/FB a couple months back and had already ditched Twitter a couple years ago. It was a weird switch at first (especially IG). There are just some people I'm probably never going to be in contact with again, and for others, I won't have passive daily updates on their lives. Honestly, I think that's normal. It's just not the cultural norm. There are definitely things I miss and events I don't know about, but I'm still filling my life with great things and am just texting people instead. This place has effectively been a public gratitude journal, and Bluesky is where I can still toss unhinged takes into the void as well as get my news. As with most millennials, I'm admittedly still wired to seek validation from people on the internet, but cutting out an algorithmic-driven life has been so much better for my mental health. The more I learn about the perils of big tech, the more I wish people in my life felt empowered to do the same, but I get that people have complex relationships with the big platforms.
Edit: I guess I also have Substack, but the 'social' aspects of it are so unappealing, I hardly ever look at it.
5d ago
The entire algo is filled with rage baiting bots meant to make you feel disenfranchised and othered while it throws the worst content at you back to back to back - I got off the ride finally 🙌🏽 I stayed for so long because I felt like I was getting important information about the world but it's honestly edited crap meant to keep you scrolling. Comments filled with misogynoir, ableist, and xenophobic word vomit. Back to blogs and youtube vlogs - it honestly feels so amazing to not have that app there. So much time wasted and energy lost - happy to adjust what I consider connecting and being connected 😊
6d ago
Top Recs from @royallmonarch
Jun 2, 2025
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I consume a lot of music regularly, and a huge part of keeping a fresh diet of new listens going is having enough sources of recommendations that aren’t an algorithm that either 1) reinforces your existing listening patterns, keeping you stagnant in your tastes, or 2) platforms whoever paid enough to push their product to the top, serving you something that may not inherently be of inferior quality, but may not align with your tastes, may not be exciting beyond just being a new release, and realigns your current listening habits to be more in line with what the average user on the platform is also listening to — which socially might have benefits but which creates a homogeneity of consumption that can become bland since you’re listening to something really just because it’s the next product on the assembly line to have its public moment and not because anything about the music actually captured your attention. the current landscape of streaming is designed to keep you at an all you can eat buffet where you take what’s served to you, and as a result a lot of us have forgotten how to look at a menu and order.
so what does taking a more active role in your own music curation look like? for me, it’s meant not using streaming as a primary listening platform. I mostly use my local Apple Music library on my phone that I curate with the vestigial iTunes Library framework that’s still a part of Apple Music on my laptop. probably going to find an alternative soon since apple seems to be cutting integration progressively. I like this method because it forces me to choose what to sync to the limited storage space I have, forcing me to take inventory of what I actually listen to and what I can offload. the files I get are mostly from Bandcamp or Soulseek depending on whether it’s available for purchase or entirely unavailable online (as is the case for a lot of electronic music that was on vinyl only, which is where soulseek comes in clutch). I also have freedom here to change the ID3 tags to better sort and organize, rate, change track info, and track my own listening data.
Bandcamp and other music purchasing platforms are great because 1) it reshapes my relationship to music away from consumerism and back towards curation. I have to pay actual money for this thing now if I want to use it, so i’m forced to consider its value (usually i’ll stream a release first to gauge my interest). 2) having to spend money helps me to course out my meals so to speak, as i’ll buy a few releases i’ve accumulated in my cart over the month and cash out on Bandcamp Friday when 100% of my money is actually getting to the artist (TOMORROW IS BANDCAMP FRIDAY BTW!!!), and between purchases I can actually chew and savor and digest my last orders, they don’t get swept up in the deluge of new releases. my plate is full until i’m done and then I order more. also for the times of the year like now when new music isn’t coming out as regularly I take time to find older music that I would normally overlook while keeping up with new drops. currently very into early 80s/late 70s music with early digital production, kinda stuff that would evolve into synthpop and dance music.
so how do you know what to order? for me, I’m getting recs through trusted curation platforms. whether it’s bandcamp daily, y’all lovely folks here on PI.FYI, friends, or most importantly musicians who I follow on socials that share their tastes through posts, stories, playlists on steaming, interviews, etc. I like this last one especially because it’s kind of like a musical game of telephone. if I like an artist and they share their interests and influences it’s like every layer in this process is stretching my palate further from the sound that I was originally interested in and into a new territory that has some shared DNA but would never have been recommended to me by an algo because there’s no shared category or label between them, only the musical influence and interpretation of it made by the artist. as an example, I was a huge Skrillex stan, he signed KOAN Sound to his label, they collab with Asa who collabs with Sorrow, Sorrow takes huge influence from Burial, Burial makes some ambient adjacent stuff and takes huge influence from 90s rave music and drum and bass and 2000s rnb, now i’m listening to Brandy - All in Me, William Basinski, Aphex Twin, none on whom would get recommended by Spotify to me from Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites.
LAST thing i’ll say — because in yappin about this i’m realizing how actually passionate about this subject I am: MAKE LISTS! playlists are cool, but they can flatten your music into vague categories of “vibes” and “aesthetics” and encourage picking one-off songs from artists that you never form an active audience relationship with. I make a practice of making my own year end lists of top 25 albums (plus some honorable recs and top individual songs) and keeping them in a notes doc that I regularly update and rearrange over the course of the year. this forces me to consider the actual relationship i’m forming with what i’ve ordered for myself. did I like it in the moment but it didn’t have staying power? is it slowly growing on me? it also encourages taking albums as a whole. maybe I liked one or two tracks a lot but the rest wasn't resonating. that’s ok! maybe I rank it lower but now i’ve actually taken time to consider it, it’s in my library, and maybe (quite a few cases for me) something I ranked like bottom 5 albums becomes a retroactive favorite from that year as my tastes evolve. also 25 albums to take with me from each year is really more than you'd think, i struggle sometimes to even find 25 that I formed a true connection with. I think the biggest thing the itunes era ruined that led into now is the single-ification of music, the ability to separate the hits from the deep cuts. albums are meant to be taken as a whole, and then once you've really sat with the whole you can find what actually stuck. even then I like to keep the whole around because soooo often i’ll write off a track that yeeeears later I come to love. trust the artist, they made it like they did for a reason.
aaannyyyywayy TLDR: get recs organically, be more active in deciding your listening patterns, fr*cken pay artists yall, trust the artist embrace the album, really consider what you consume
Feb 29, 2024
Jun 4, 2025