Just wanted to post a bit about the last year. I did a kind of experiment, and tried to replace big social media with e-mail. It worked pretty well!

I signed up for e-mail newsletter from my favorite brands (like Rivian) and bands and stuff, and just let them message me weekly or so. The rest of the contact was with people I already had in my contacts. I gave them all a cute, weird little avatar to make it more personal, and just logged in once a day.

Pretty neat results. Stress levels went down, time on-line went down, anxiety levels went down, and the less social media news I consumed, the less depressed I felt. But could still keep in touch with folks.

I still think there's a role (a big one) for smaller sites like this, and I'm glad SaidIt's here. But the experiment went well, and helped me re-learn how to write letters to people.