Quick background: I want to buy a laptop that is really well built, easy to upgrade and repair, and portable. Has at least a 16inch screen and a decent battery, plus a good keyboard.

Some 2 weeks ago, after spending many weeks searching for a good laptop, I finally decided to order the extremely expensive Slimbook Executive 16. I was at first more inclined to buy the twin from Tuxedo because it was black and I could buy it without Nvidia, so much cheaper.

BUT.

The Tuxedo people told me that although on their website it says:

These laptops are actually made out of plastic and that magnesium alloy is steamed on the chassis themselves. What!? I made sure I got it right so I asked them to confirm several times. And they did. At best their website is dishonest, at worst they want to trick you. Which one is it? You decide.

Now, because TUxedo and Slimbook provide laptops that are honestly almost, if not entirely, identical (just check all of their models – chassis, hardware, sizes, etc.) I asked the Slimbook people if theirs are also plastic with coated magnesium alloy. They confirmed at least 10 times I think, that this is not true. Theirs are purely metal: aluminium+magnesium alloy, as stated on their website.

I decided. Slimbook.

It arrived:

Took a while but it arrived. I live in Spain, they ship from Spain, 5 hours away from where I am. Ok. Anyway.

First impressions were that it does not feel like a sturdy laptop. I have 2 to compare it with. First is my plastic laptop. Slimbook feels sturdier than my laptop. Second is Sasha’s laptop which is a 13inch fully aluminium laptop. Slimbook feels like plastic compared to that one. I can beat you with Sasha’s laptop for sure, and I could even kill you with it, then I am quite sure it will probably still work. But I can’t do that with Slimbook. Yes magnesium alloy is lighter than aluminium, but idk…it feels like a well built plastic laptop to me. Which is not a good thing for me since I want a very s sturdy one.

So, the way it is built, for me, is not what I was looking for. I am inclined to believe this is “a plastic laptop with magnesium alloy steamed onto it”, like the Tuxedo folks were saying. Call me crazy but I won’t be shocked if the Slimbook people willingly or not misinformed me about their build quality.

Funny that they have a sticker that says “Protected by Magnesium”. Protected…hm….

I don’t know but if I were to sell laptops that are fully metal built, I would advertise that like “Chassis made out of aluminium and magnesium alloy!”. Again, maybe this is a conspiracy I am creating inside my head but things smell fishy to me.

The keyboard is a bit odd. Some key symbols are not centered yet others are…

Not something that bothers me too much, but still an odd thing to see.

The charged is a fat-charger for a slim-book 😀

It is massive. That makes this laptop not very portable since the battery form my initial tests, is not great with that Nvidia card. Maybe lasts for 2-3h…maybe a bit more. Maybe it is normal for such a powerful machine.

The worst part: the screen colors are washed out. Look:

I do not care about little differences, but this is a massive difference. My old laptop has a more contrasty look, a lot more. Slimbook is super washed out. I tested on Sasha’s laptop and her screen is almost identical with mine. So idk which screen looks more like most screens out there, but for sure I prefer my old laptop screen and Sasha’s screen. If two screens from two different laptops look a lot better than the Slimbook’s one, maybe it is the Slimbook that’s not doing well.

And this is awful because I checked the documentary I just edited the colors for, and on my screen and Sasha’s looks great, on Slimbook looks not that great….what is it happening? Maybe this model has a fucked-up screen!? IDK…but this is the worst thing for me, something that if not fixed I will return the laptop. I can maybe put up with the rest, but not with this for sure.

Speaking of screens. You know I’ve been saying that 2k 3k 4k screens are a BS marketing unless we talk about very large screens and content to match that screen. Well…Slimbook has a 16inch 3k screen. If I switch between 3k and fullhd I can’t really tell any difference. Maybe my eyes are not the best, but I feel like this is just a BS marketing thing.

Now…the screen size is perfect for me. I love the 16:10 aspect ratio. I love how light it is. I like how it looks and I despise those many stickers. The webcam is decent, the speakers are great. I can’t open it to look inside because they added a sticker to one of the screws to stop you from doing that and I am concerned I can’t return it if I open it up. Speaking of that, the bottom part of the chassis feels like pure plastic to me. Quite flimsy even when it is attached to the laptop.

Overall this laptop is a monster in terms of hardware. That’s fantastic. But the build quality, although not bad at all, is not at all a sturdy one in my view. I would feel concerned to carry this laptop around for long. The battery is not great at all and if you leave it on the bed for example, the laptop gets super hot super fast.

I will test it for longer but so far idk what to say….because on one hand I LOVE the screen size and the overall size and weight of the laptop. But at the gigantic price of 1750 Euros….(sure I got it 150 euros cheaper), but at that price you expect a fantastically well built laptop that will last you for a decade. At least that’s how I think.

Maybe that’s how laptops are built nowadays….light, seem fragile….maybe I will keep it eventually. But idk…if not I will return it and search for a new one next year after TROM II is done. I may be inclined to go for a good Thinkpad or older models that were better built.

Let’s see if Slimbook will convince me to keep it….I kinda doubt….

On the front page of the BBC website I see an article about Mastodon:

That is great, but also not so.

It is fantastic that more people are joining the fediverse, but I am concerned and annoyed about a couple of things:

A. Popularity gets polluted

In a world where trade is the main activity for humans (jobs, money, data collection, all that crap), the more people will join, the more of these charlatans will, who want to promote their own shit on the platform. After all a lot of accounts on Twitter/Facebook are made for companies and to sell shit. They will start to do that on the Fediverse. Watch out!

B. Musk should not be the reason

If people move to the fediverse because of Musk, this is not ok. If they were not put off by Twitter’s ads, control, data collection, and centralization in the first place, then they have no clue what really fucks things up in this world. Is not just billionaires, it is the system making them and all of the above fuckery. So if platforms are trade-based: they ask you something in return (money, data, other currencies, attention, etc.) then this platform is a dangerous one. But I doubt most people understand that.

C. Misunderstanding about Mastodon/Fediverse

It is a great shame that people who write about this network only focus on Mastodon and do not understand how this works. That BBC article does make it look like the network is Mastodon. But that’s gravely wrong. There are plenty of networks, some a lot more feature-rich than Mastodon. I understand, for newcomers can be confusing, but for one the more you talk about it the less confusing it becomes, and second if you do not talk about this then you completely dismiss the power of the federated network and its decentralized nature.

For example, if they were to recommend Friendica (which I use and provide a public instance of) then they could have mentioned that Friendica connects with Twitter too, and you can bring all of your friends in a second to Friendica, from Twitter. Get their posts in Friendica, reply to them, get notifications and all that. MUCH easier to come from Twitter to Friendica! Also Friendica is so feature-rich…and works with any Mastodon app….

D. Concentration is bad for federation

Speaking of promoting only Mastodon, they basically talk about 2-3 instances when they make these articles. Now people flock there, and we have a situation in which very few instances have most users…these instances are so powerful now. @Eugen 💀 and others should have not accepted more than say 100.000 users or less on their instances. This is so bad I can’t explain. It means ONE single human can destroy connections and fuck things up for hundreds of thousands on the fediverse. Terrible!

Also this fuckery from the BBC article:

My god…the “donation” practice has been entirely corrupted nowadays isn’t it? If admins ask for donations that’s entirely different from someone asking you for money in order to get access to their network. A donation won’t get you anything in return. This is why our struggle at TROM to explain why trade is essential to understand. Something is not free when you have to trade for it in return of getting that thing.

So, BBC:

• If I have a Mastoton instance and say “You pay me 10$ a month and then you can join” then that’s not free. You have to trade 10$ in order to join the network.
• If I say “You join but you need to watch these ads that you cannot disable” then it is not free. I want your attention. So you trade your attention in order to join the network.
• If I say “You can join the network but I collect data about you to make a profit off of it”….you guessed it, it is not freee. You traded your data for accessing the network.

However: if I say “You can join my network. I do not want anything from you. But if you want to donate you can.” Then it is FREE. No trade. You can or cannot donate. And you can still join the network.

K? 😁

Now welcome to the fediverse, not mastodon!

3 days ago I was writing about a laptop I bought for 100 Euros that impressed me. How well it was design making it so easy to upgrade and repair. This post https://social.trom.tf/display/dbc8dc44-1163-5943-3cb0-731309094804

Well now I have an exact opposite example. A few years ago we bought a very cheap laptop for my father. 2 core processor (intel), 4GB of RAM, some 500 GB HDD. 200 Euros or so. And the build quality is awful. Plus the way you open it up….

For example you have to open the entire back plastic panel to access anything. The screws are black on a black panel, the plastic quality is terrible, and then you have to somehow know that this:

is not just a rubber thingy to make your laptop stand better on a desk…no no, it hides screws inside of it. So you have to unglue that.

What a terrible design. I remember some 2 years ago when I first opened it up to change the HDD with an SSD, I almost broke the plastic panel trying to take it apart because I was unaware there are screws underneath those. Terrible design!

Then how do I put those rubber legs back? Glue them back? Awful!

After you struggle to open it, you find this:

It is easy to change the drive and the RAMs. However only 1 slot for the RAM. WTF! I’ve never seen a laptop with only 1 slot for the RAM. This is terrible. I had another RAM stick of 4GB around and wanted to upgrade it to 8GB but guess what, there is nowhere to add another stick…

Actually this was the reason I opened it again tonight, to only find out about this stupid thing.

The worst part is that the hinges are metal screwed into the plastic case and because it is so difficult to open, I broke both hinges….the plastic they were screwed into broke completely. And trust me I opened many laptops this never happened to me before. But this build quality is complete shit.

This happened 2 years ago when I first opened it. And made it so difficult when I reopened it again because I was afraid I will completely destroy it….I tried to glue them but in vain. Basically you can still close the lid, but it is a shitstorm and it will break completely sooner than later.

All in all, it is a complete fuckery this laptop. Poorly made out of shitty plastic. Difficult to open up to the point where you will break it. You only have 1 RAM slot. Not worth it.

I found a newer version of the same Fujitsu laptop, same model. Double the hardware power. Core i5, 8GB of RAM, 180 GB SSD. Same ebay seller. 200 Euros with 1 year warranty. I will tell my parents to perhaps buy that one. And this laptop we can sell for 16 Euros or give it to someone who won’t be able to do much with it…

Will see but this is the exact opposite example of my previous one.

A better made laptop for 100 Euros

A relative of ours who does not have much money, had an old computer. Then she had no more. It went kaboom. We thought to do a good deed an buy a laptop for …

^{social.trom.tf}

My plan for the next year.

Release TROM II, have a wonderful TROM meeting in May, save as much money as possible + work to make some more and buy a motorhome. By October next year have the motorhome, some monthly income from WebApe (hopefully) and then go travel across Spain, Portugal, go to Norway see the Fjords and other parts of Europe 😀 . Basically see the nature side of it.

While doing that make more TROM books, more TROM-Casts, more videos, meet new orgs and projects, spread the word about “trade is the origin of most problems” and the antidote “trade-free”.

If we manage to buy a motorhome and all works great with that, and if I manage to make WebApe a monthly income generator (or if we find other sources), then we can support ourselves and TROM for a long time. Maybe we can get enough financial support from donations for TROM…that’d be amazing but idk…

After that I’d like for us to go to Hawaii for a bit, because I’d love to see that place, then USA and buy a motorhome there (sell the old one) and travel across USA and see the national parks.

That’s my “dream” now. And I am working on it.

Because you see, I want to have a wonderful life while also screaming about this bullshit society and propose realistic solutions for this BS. But I can’t just scream and be angry, this won’t even last. I want to also enjoy life, see the nature that is left, meet the humans that are still humans and not citizens, and so forth.

So let’s see….for now I will get back to work on TROM II.

We had the wonderful @Aaron visiting us:

We had a paella – rare thing for us to eat out, maybe 4-5 times a year. But a paella we love 😀

We had such a wonderful time together despite him only staying for just 3 nights.

Staying in nature, with the hammocks, having great discussions…wonderful!

Looking forward to meet him again in May!

Ok, now go finish TROM II 😀

#tromlive

A relative of ours who does not have much money, had an old computer. Then she had no more. It went kaboom. We thought to do a good deed an buy a laptop for her. A cheap one. So I found one on ebay, for 100 Euros. Second hand. Yeah, 100 Euros. Fujitsu Lifebook E734 i3-4a. 4GB of RAM, 320GB HDD. Intel Graphics card. From 2014.

It is a bit scratched on the top lid, but other than that looks really good. Top lid made out of some metal, same as the top part where the keyboard is:

So I want to say a few things. First, the build aspect of it impressed me!

It is meant to be repaired and upgraded, at least mostly. From the bottom you can easily access the Drive, RAM, and the DVDroom (whoever still uses those). Just 1 screw holding them in place. So easy to deal with those.

The best part:

You can take the dust filter out, no screws needed, from the back of the laptop. In a second. Clean it, and put it back. This is the best feature (hardware) wise that I’ve seen for a laptop so far. I need to open up my entire laptop to clean it once a month, else it starts to overheat and does not work well at all. Imagine if I could simply take the filter out and clean! How in the world are not all laptops equipped with this!?

I love that thing so much!

Now, when it came, only had 1 issue. When the fan kicked in, it made a very loud noise and made the laptop vibrate….was quite bad. The best part is that I managed to open it up in a few minutes by unscrewing just some 10 screws. It was very easy to open this laptop up and that I loved. I quickly accessed the fan and cleaned it inside. I had to add some special oil to make it run smoothly. This is a very old fan so this may happen. That fixed it.

I of course nuked Windows and installed TROMjaro. Everything worked!

Bluetooth, wifi, keyboard keys, function keys….all! Runs so smooth and fast. The processor is more than enough for most uses for most people. The RAM is fine, depends how many websites you have opened in tabbed windows, but you can cheaply and easily upgrade that.

Overall for 100 Euros you can get a great laptop second hand. Well built, not that bulky at all, and useful for most people.

I also love how easily I could switch the TROMjaro layout into a Windows-like, something this person may be more familiar with. Lovely!

Point is, we should re-use. Second, I have seen several laptops over these past decade and this one is the best designed so far in terms of how easy they made it to repair and upgrade. All laptops should be like that. This is 8 years old but looks 20 years ahead in terms of the thinking that went into designing it for repair and upgrade.

In short, I need and want to finish the TROM II documentary before our TROM Meeting in May next year. And I need 0 distractions.

In long….

2019.

I remember brainstorming with @Aaron about this documentary some 3 years ago.

The idea was that we have so many materials for TROM (think about the latest book, The Origin of Most Problems that is over one thousand pages long) that we definitely need a documentary of some sort to introduce people to these ideas. Maybe a 1h long documentary or so. And make it quick. I was kinda convinced I can do it in like half a year….

2020-2021

A year or so later I started to work on it. I said, let’s do it! But I needed financial support. I made a donation campaign for 13k euros to allow me to work for a full year on the documentary. I only raised 2-3k. So I didn’t have the money. I thus delayed it…

I even made a sort of video-campaign for it….

My idea was to make a script, to write it, but I ended up writing more and more….then I thought “Fuck it, I cannot make a short documentary….I wont limit myself. I will make it as long as it will be.”. So I wrote more and I was starting to incorporate our books into the documentary. Lots of scientific papers, lots of science, lots of facts….and I started to realize that this will become a huge documentary and perhaps boring…also….wtf do we still need “proof” that this society is fucked-up? And to explain “trade as the origin of most problems” (the core of the documentary) we should not need “facts” as much as a way to make people rethink that the problems we see today are a result of trade. Many voice it by accusing “money”, corruption, capitalism and so forth.

Anyhow, after talking with others I kinda got convinced that I should ditch the script and do a more personal one. A documentary that’s easy to follow and makes sense for most people. So I decided to interview a few of my TROM-friends. Also, I would be a talking head too.

That was easy to do. Sit down and record. Of course I had a sort of script/notes for it all. We started to record in June 2020.

And finished in May 2021…

Took almost a year to finish the recordings…which I would have considered insane if you told me when I started it. But you know the Covid19 pandemic started and we got busy with that, mentally (following the news) and physically – a bit restrained by the restrictions.

It was also when I had to deal with some serious stuff for TROMjaro and took me a lot of time to deal with…

On top of that I released a new massive project: https://trom.tf/ and we were adding new services to it.

We moved all of our videos and social presence to alternative platforms that were trade-free. This was a massive amount of work but something I am extremely happy I did. We also moved the many websites we had to a new, unmanaged server since it was far cheaper and far more powerful….this was very new to me. I had to learn how to manage a server. Took at least a month or two to get used to it.

We were also TROM-casting…..and we were suffering tremendously money-wise. I was quite depressed about all of it. Felt really down because I didn’t know how to continue the work.

So that period of time was quite busy and stressful for me. In July 2021 I started to edit the documentary. Luckily I got some financial support and that allowed me to work on it.

I had over 40h of recordings….with 2 cameras. Was a lot more difficult than I expected. I did a of of work.

The rest of 2021 I spent trying to work on the documentary but also stressing about the financial situation…plus a ton of work on trom.tf – from technical to moderation and everything in between. Oh, and we moved TROMjaro from Gnome to XFCE…for those who understand what these are they get it that it was very difficult.

Took several months to work on and off and make it stable. At times I worked everyday for weeks on end. I had to postpone the documentary work several times because of this.

Between dealing with TB of backups, moving servers, creating new projects, trom-casting, tromjaro (remember I was also testing hundreds of apps for our tromjaro library), moving our materials to alternative platforms and such….I tried to work on the documentary too.

2022

This year I worked a lot on TROM II. By June I was able to finish some 2h of it. See. But then I had to stop again because we were financially fucked again. I launched WebApe, a webdesign project to help me make some money. That took some time to create and then to try and find some websites to make. Thanks to @Alexio I managed to get 3 projects. That was not financially sufficient. It was still stressful.

Luckily our financial situation greatly improved. Thanks to @Guillaume , @Roma @Aaron and a few others who donated big amounts of money, and especially to @Sasha who managed to make some money too. Now we were fine. Now we are fine!

I managed to add 30 more minutes to those 2h in July/August. Then cut the rest of the 20h into the last remaining 3h of the documentary. I tried to start working on these 3h but I could not much….busy with tromjaro, trom.tf, videoneat and the rest. TROM-Cast no more either….

NOW

You see I am busy with more things than what I just explained. Since the start of the documentary I did a lot of new projects and a lot of work in many ways. I also spend time replying to emails or having long discussions on the TROM Discussions chat. I do many things….no wonder that I could not finish this documentary yet.

Now it is October 2022. And things seem perfect for me. We have enough money till next year, same time. So I should not worry about money for at least a year or so. That’s absolutely FABULOUS. I’ve never been better financially actually. But let’s not celebrate yet since my calculations only take into account our basic needs. Who knows what else may intervene. Also, what do we do after 1 year?…. Therefore any donations are immensely important to prolong this work. And I am always transparent with whatever money we get for TROM.

Anyway, I have money now. And it is quiet here (summer is gone). Things should be calm and relaxing. Now it is the perfect timing to work and finish the documentary. Unless some weird things may happen, like a World World 3, or the hosting company kicking me out, or who knows…

All of the trains work great: tromjaro.com, videoneat.com, trom.tf, tromsite.com, tromnews.com…..my websites. All!

Therefore I will have to force myself to get back to TROM II.

I will mute the TROM Discussions chat for now, so that I am not distracted. I am really sorry that I have to do this. There are over 100 people in that chat. But I truly need to focus on TROM II and I will 100% get distracted if I leave the chat on. People will comment there and I cannot help but check it and respond…it is great to see more and more people there, and no worries, as soon as TROM II is released or close to be released. the chat will be available for all to comment again! I am 1 human and I can’t do everything, please understand that I need some quiet time to finish this.

And won’t even open my email until later on in the day or something like that. I need to isolate myself. Let’s see how it goes…

Trust me it starts to annoy me this documentary….I do not want to work on it for so long…I want to do new things. New videos, books, talks, debates….etc. So let me finish it 😁.

TROM Meeting in May

Next year, in May, we will organize a meeting- Similar to this –

And I definitely want the documentary to be done by then. Things look exciting again! Cannot wait! 6-7 months Tio boy! FINISH IT!

If you feed your brain with culture, then culture is your operating system. But culture is a human invention. Often too simplistic, moronic, competitive driven, trade-influenced. A culture of celebrities and those watching them, dreaming of becoming one of them. Shallow values, fake smiles, fake lives.

If you watch movies, listen to music, scroll endlessly on social (ad) networks; you tiktok daily, gossip, small talk, come’here drink a beer; if you are enculturated, you are missing out on something mind blowing.

This:

And this:

And this too:

And this weirdo:

And this, wtf that is:

Or these:

THE WORLD: The REALITY.

The center stage of your life. You are the center of the universe because your experience is yours, and that makes you the most important creature in the universe for yourself. And the reality is something we, humans, recently discovered. Plus, it is not being “marketed”. And thus, it is not “popular”. So many do not know about “it”. The “reality” is, for most, a geeky thing…science and such…

Immensely misunderstood.

You are being tricked into culture/society. You are being fooled and scammed. By this:

This:

Or this:

And this weirdo:

You are not part of that “world”. It is not yours. You are only here to watch it, get jealous, to consume and be consumed; to dream about illusions.

But if you realize that you are part of a humongous universe, and of an evolutionary process taking up billions of years, then you are as equal as anyone else. We are all in this, and it is about us, because we discovered this world. Embrace it. Force it into your essence!

As harsh as this may sound: stop watching movies or listen to dumb music. Stop using Facebook, Tiktok and the like. Games? Fuck them! Don’t copy this retarded society. Don’t be tricked by it. Netflix, Spotify, “smart”-phones, whatever the shit it is advertised to you: clothes and fake holidays, are all a scam. You’ll live and never realize what you truly are, a HUMAN.

Everyone tells you to consume these stupid useless shits. Because they are traded. Refuse!

I am telling you from my personal experience. I too was watching movies, and all sorts of shows, football, and all that. Was obsessed over some. But me, my life, felt mediocre at best. I am not like those famous people, I am not as good looking, well dressed, and so on….It is impossible to escape these feelings when you are soaked into culture.

But then I forced myself to watch documentaries, and read about the real world. For years. Felt very unnatural and uncomfortable. But after some time that gets into your system. Now I feel as important as any living creature. We are truly the universe looking at itself.

These used to mean “stars” in my world:

But now the only stars in my world, in my head, in my reality, are those that I see in the night sky.

That’s the difference!

You are star-stuff, literally. The story of you, and the importance of you, is far greater than you may imagine. This is not some inspirational corny post, it is true all that I am saying. A star had to explode, for the elements in your body to be created.

A frog, a fish, a mountain, that grass and the blue sky. Only made of a handful of building blocks. Same ones. A lego-like world. A mystery waiting to be revealed. An endless process of discovery. We will never know the full story of ourselves…..how the universe began….what was before that….where do we go….and that, to me, makes us immortal. Because we are, the universe indeed.

How beautiful! How real!

I wish we would all realize who we are, rather than what we are told to be, by a culture oiled by trade.

Don’t get scammed! Force reality into your brain.

You know I made a post some months ago being quite concerned about WW3, and I really try to keep my tits calm when it comes to such scenarios since I have seen so many times speculations about all sorts of things and normally nothing radical happens in this world, in any regards.

I haven’t posted about the situation in Russia in some time, but I kept an eye on it via AlJazeera, BBC, Euronews but also the awful rt.com out of curiosity. Things slowed down a bit for the past months, but became a lot more tense for the past weeks. There is a serious worry that this can still escalate into a WW3, as unimaginable as it may seem even for those acknowledging that it may happen. Like me.

Russia (Putin kinda leading it) seems to have very few options on the table other than some small nukes to “scare off” the world. And Ukraine is pumped full of weapons and support.

Russia already set the stage to not allow itself to go down in a controlled manner. Declaring some 10% of Ukraine as “theirs”, and Ukraine having no interest in backing down, to the contrary taking that territory back, combined with the inability of Russia to fight on the ground and hold onto territories….makes me think that these crazy minds that are in power in Russia, are very close to use bigger weapons like nuclear ones.

Problem is, once they do, it is like trying to extinguish a flaming cooking pan by pouring a liter of water on top of it. Ukraine + the rest supporting them will probably respond in kind. Explosions, the big kind, will happen. We are past the “sanctions” card, we are past the threats that seem to have 0 effect, and now the morons may go on a full-war approach.

I hope I am wrong, again, but seems quite a tense situation.

And as much as people hate Putin, he is not the only one there. He has a lot of supporters and people around him. Whatever they think, they have started a big fight and they won’t back away easily, or at all it seems.

Let’s see how things will progress….probably we will see 2-3 more months of fighting on the ground, to then who know….a nuke or two!?

Fucking awful bunch of humans this society has created.

You know what feature would make sense to have online for mind-sanity? A toggle that disables all comments or interactions on your posts, and enables them again when you toggle it on. So if you are really not in the mood to reply to any comments, or see any notifications, then the saner is to stop the comments or the interactions. Not to hide them from you, when you know that they are there. But to stop them entirely. That’s the piece of mind I’d like to experience from time to time.

Also, when you present something in-person, usually you give a speech/presentation, the ones interested listen, and at the end you do a Q&A for a few minutes. You select a few who are interested to ask questions, and engage with them for a limited time.

That’s sane for the one giving the lecture. A human cannot cope with more than a few people poking at them with questions.

And yet online we do not have these features. If I publish a video or a book, then even 10 more thoughtful questions can draw hours or days of your life in terms of back and forth engagement.

This is not healthy.

I do a lot of digital stuff (these “presentations”) and what I do is not very popular at all, and yet even I get overwhelmed quickly when 3-4 people start to comment all at once and reply, and comment, and reply, and you try to joggle between them. If you want to engage with those who poke at you with questions and points, then it is truly overwhelming. This is why there are no comment features for our books on tromsite.com. If we release a book we will do a TROMcast about it and that’s the Q&A for like a few hours. And I can get mentally ready for that. And you can come there and express your criticism. Simple and sane.

The paradox is that I’d rather see thousands of comments because that would make me ignore them all, rather than a few that somehow I feel obliged to reply to.

I would like to be able to post a video/book or make a long post, and close the comments entirely, or have them open for like the first day or two. This way I can keep myself a lot more relaxed and sane, and those who want to engage with me can still do it, in a saner way. Because you see, you may think that I cannot handle criticism or whatever if I would close the comments, but the reason is 180 degrees to the other direction: I want to be able to properly engage with those who disagree, and I cannot do that if more than 5 people disagree with me at the same time.

Imagine you give a presentation in front of an audience. And after it is done tens of people start to yell questions and criticism at you all at once. This is chaos! But that’s the Internet!

The Internet is a bazaar. A marketplace. Where comments are not just “comments”, they are “engagements” and thus a measure of the trading power of a video. More of that may mean more currency or other products in return. Success online means more. More likes, more views, more shares, more people shouting about what you do. And no one dares to stop people from commenting because they lose a trade advantage, Youtube and other platforms, monitor such “engagements” and based on that and other measurements, they will boost or not your video. And since most humans are there to trade their content, then they won’t want to stop people from commenting for this reason alone. We see trade affecting everything indeed. We can’t have nice things when what drives us is to trade trade trade.

If we were to focus on the content and the interaction only, the we would invent and prioritize such tools to make it easier for those who create and publicize content, to engage with those who want to criticize their work.

And yes you can disable comments on youtube, and maybe other platforms allow that too. Yes you can create your own website and not allow any comments, but on the fediverse for example and on many other networks, you cannot do this. And I am talking about more than just those options, I am talking about the ability to easily mute all of your digital presence, and to be able to do so for a period of time too (an hour, a day, a week, whatever) and re-enable it afterwards. I am talking about how the Internet is not designed with this in mind, and that’s my most important point.

Funny enough while I was writing this post I got 4 more comments in the notification area:
#tromlive
That after I replied to several not long ago. It is like being interrupted while writing for a presentation, and after you publish it you get the usual: all comments at once chaos. Not a good way to treat human minds.

Please don’t be put off by this post of mine. Comment, is fine. If I get bothered I won’t reply or ignore you and such. It is not the best set of tools at all, but then I also not want to make you, whoever you are, concerned that if you comment you bother me. At times you will, but until we have better tools it is what it is. And not all comments are bothersome of course, mostly those that disagree with what you posted, since they require an answer from you….

But damn….would be so amazing to be able to truly silence your online presence and no one to be able to comment or whatever on any of your posts, videos, and so on. To at least have that ability. How great that would be…..

#tromlive