Hello (Anti-Social Social) World!

24 Jun, 2025

Disappearing from the internet—almost entirely—for seven months straight, will continue to rank peak-tier on my 2024–2025 highlight reel.

Not because there was a dearth of wins (e.g., I delivered a TEDx talk, spoke at events across the globe, was featured as an industry leader in industry-leading publications, and between AdLunam + Altcoin + myself + my cofounder, we won a total of 14 awards for doing awesome stuff).

It's all because I learned to breathe.

Not the meditative, hippie version (though that helps too). I mean the kind of breath people take when they’re finally allowed to be human beings again. We’ve been overdosing on human doing, so rehab's not a bad plan.

When last did you have the luxury of simply existing? To rejoice in the miracle of your own aliveness? For no reason other than the fact that you're here now?

Yeah. Me neither. Getting there wasn’t easy—or especially welcome. My body all but stopped working, so I had the luxury of being forced into it, very much against my kicking-and-screaming will.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with social media for the better part of two decades. At some point, I traded MySpace (RIP to the GOAT) for Facebook—and with it, a slice of my (and society's) soul. (No Doomer Luddite here: AdLunam Social is a SocialFi platform. The future of social is social, even if we’re all quietly becoming full-time introverts.)

But social media—and by extension, most of what we do on the internet when we’re not asking ChatGPT how to cook potatoes—has kept us holding our breath for way too long. And now AI is choking out whatever air's left in our lungs.

This time, I’m not the only one who’s “done.” (Usually, I’m the one leaving the Social Media Giant dungeons only to crawl back when no one but I followed me out.)

Now (here's looking at you, AI slop, soul-deep fatigue, and the ongoing collapse of reality) the entire internet seems to be done. As in, caving in on itself. (Wait, that doesn't sound like a good thing.)

While I could go high-brow and quote Jung or Jodorowsky¹, I think Celine Dion says it best in Deadpool (also, that guy knows a thing or two about surviving life storms):

I've been shaking I've been bending backwards 'til I'm broke Watching all these dreams go up in smoke Let beauty come out of ashes And when I pray to God, all I ask is (All I ask is) Can beauty come out of ashes?

So what rises from the ashes of the internet? For one: MySpace Era 2.0, a.k.a. the IndieWeb. Seriously, this stuff saves ya.

(Also: a lot of scary stuff. A lot of cool stuff. All of it worth list-making.)

So {Hello World}, again. This time, we’re doing it the Anti-Social Social way.

I’d stick around and overdose on the alphabet in an attempt to word-vomit out a manifesto, but doctrine forbids exceeding the 500-word essay mark. There’s always tomorrow.