Are you doing something to fuck over "the powerful"? If so, what?
4mon 9d ago by slrpnk.net/u/amos in asklemmy
The title may sound weird. I initially wrote it as "fuck over the billionaires". But it is not only billionaires, but also multi-millionaires and people who think themselves hierarchically superior.
So:
- Are you doing something to fuck over "the powerful"? If so, what?
Myself, I am becoming as much "anti-consumption" as possible. I am removing myself from capitalism, as much as possible.
I still have to eat, of course, so I buy food. But I don't buy food from corporations. As an example, I don't buy anything from Nestle, nor from any big corporations. Gadgets and tech, I will be avoiding as much as possible, and if I do find myself needing to buy, I will do so but not from the usual corporations.
Social networks: only lemmy and mastodon sometimes. Fuck reddit and instagram and facebook. Don't have an account there and never will. I don't go there anymore.
I try to keep a "solarpunk" attitude. I do things for the good of the environment. I do/will-be-doing things such as composting, reducing the use of plastic, avoiding cars.
I am also trying to get people on board with my view of things, but I haven't been much successful. I think principled people are very rare. People just don't care.
Same. I stopped buying most things. I haven't ordered anything online since 2019. I wouldn't say I do it to "fuck over the powerful," though. I can't imagine they care too much. Interacting with companies just became more and more toxic, until I couldn't be arsed to do it - beyond the bare minimum. There are a few exceptions, but I can already see the enshittification starting with those too.
When I buy something these days, I try to buy it used. A lot of people need money these days, and they're selling off stuff they don't need or use. So I'm helping them get rid of some stuff and make money, I'm getting stuff I need cheap, and the corps get nothing.
Over the last few years, I've put together a nice little personal recording studio, with several cheap, but excellent guitars and keyboards and drum machines, with almost everything used. A lot of it is barely used, some of it I suspect was NEVER used, and I'm getting this stuff for 10% of what it was new. The couple of guitars I bought new were great super budget guitars that were crazy cheap before tariffs.
Too much good used stuff out there, and people who need money.
This^ I’m doing the same thing. Everything that was hyped and “everyone is doing it” since the late 90s….. just stopping all of that. Going to causal mode, not off grid, just going with the flow with the bare minimum.
I don't buy any US brands as I get the Aldi version instead.
Same. My spending is one of my biggest voices
I’ve concluded that with personal boycotts, perfect is the enemy of good. Time was I’d decide to boycott someone like Nestle but then fall off the wagon when I had a Smarties craving and then just sort of stop doing the rest of it.
So now I take the approach of trying to look for an alternative, but if I can’t find it then I won’t beat myself up about it, I’ll keep trying tomorrow. It’s not great but it’s better than what I was doing before.
That said, it wasn’t at all difficult to cut all the US grocery brands out of my shopping when Trump started his tariff bullshit, cause it’s all hyper-processed artificially coloured crap to begin with.
Kind of reminds me of a vegan couple I knew in college. They did a speech in class (for public speaking), and one of the points was "Even just cutting meat out one day a week, like with meatless mondays, helps a lot more than you'd expect"
Even cutting back can make a dent
Looking at the average meat consumption is crazy tbh. We buy less between the 2 of us, even if you include the bone/fat/skin as when I do buy it I get the cheapest cuts. Got a small cut of pork shoulder for this week, and that is the entire weeks meat, 4 meals from the pork with the other 3 being vegetarian (cheese/honey so not vegan)
Beekeeper here. For the life of me, I can't understand why vegans can't have honey. I understand it is an animal product. But there is no harm to bees when harvesting honey properly.
Same goes for wool. Have you ever seen a sheep that hasn't been sheared?
I do know vegans that are fine with eating honey, but generally it isn't considered a vegan food.
Any interesting recipes for the pork shoulder? I took one out of the freezer yesterday that I'm going to be braising today, but also I have another bigger one in the freezer that I should do something with at some point
It needs time to reduce how tough it is, either slow cooking it or let it soak in vinegar (and other things for seasoning) for a long time before cooking. Often go for that if I am going to cook it over a firepit.
This week I will be slow cooking it in a pasta sauce. Skin/fat removed and frozen to use another time, rendering the fat in a saucepan and keep it cooking until the solid bits go crispy, delicious with salt and I keep the fat in a pot in the fridge. I freeze it so that I can render it in batches as its quite a mess to clean up and loves sticking to the pan. I do wonder if a wire mesh to keep it off the base of the pan would help.
I'm loving those around me and feeling empathy for everyone on the planet even harder. They can throw me in a concentration camp or kill me, but they can't make me not love.
But I do. And spending time doing that takes away from any time they'd rather have me panicking and spiraling.
Thank you, you too 💜
Caring about your neighbours and spending time with them is literally the first step to creating a better world. The powers that be most definitely do care about community resilience because it makes them harder to control.
Share tools with your neighbours. Borrow a carving knife, lend a pitchfork, share the pike that impales billionaires.
I’m here, for starters.
I’ve been systematically removing as many parts of myself from the corporate internet over the course of years. So far I’ve managed to drop:
- GMail
- Netflix
- Windows
- Prime
- HBO
I still have some stragglers, like YouTube, that I doubt will go anytime soon, but for the most part, I don’t have to deal with:
- Dark patterns
- Advertisements
- Anti-features (updates that remove functionality)
- FOMO
- Advertisements again
- Advertisements a third time
Really, I just do not like being advertised to, and outside YouTube sponsorships, which can be skipped, I can go whole days without ever coming across an ad on the internet, and even that feels high.
On top of all this, I’ve massively reduced my data collection footprint, meaning there’s far less info available to said advertisers and data collectors that they can use to manipulate me.
I also regularly try to provide some of this to my friends to also help cut them away from the propaganda machine.
YouTube, in my experience, has been the hardest one to fully cut. Sometimes you need a video tutorial for something, and there just... Isn't one anywhere but YT. Also a lot of the content types just... Aren't available elsewhere, and it was hard for a while not having some of my favorite YTers to watch. Nebula, and Dropout definitely helped with that part, though, they had enough that it made it easier.
It did make me realize how dependent I was on YT for emotional regulation, though. I have real bad anxiety, and I realized pretty quickly I was watching things to numb it. Podcasts, music, and to a lesser extent books/fanfic have helped with that though. Generally now I'm looking for people who want to make something good, not make money, and that's lead me down a lot of really interesting rabbit holes in general with art
(I know a lot of artists are trying to make money, and pay your artists, but there's a difference between "Making something that will sell" and "Making something you're proud of hoping people will like it" y'know?)
In a similar boat in regards to cutting out invasive, rapidly-enshittifying corporate tech providers but I agree that YouTube still has some good content worth it. Good news is that with the use of Invidious servers on desktop and SmartTube / NewPipe on Android TV or mobile you can pretty much have your cake and eat it too.
P.S. if you’re looking for a less shitty / ad bloated way of watching Yt videos on Nvidia Shield Pro or similar Android TV I recently switched from NewPipe to SmartTube and it’s much better since it integrates Sponsorblock and the UI is actually designed for a TV.
Giving up those socials is a great start, and often times the start is the hardest part. I don't see Instagram though. Hopefully you have quit them and just forgot to mention, if not, consider this the universe sending you a message motivating you to delete it!
Of all the "content provider websites", youtube is certainly the hardest part to "cut". However, the signal to noise ratio of youtube is so low (small signal, large noise) that I pretty much don't use it anymore. Even good channels are, more and more, going for clickbait and shitty tactics, and AI content. I didn't really actively cut youtube, but I did so passively. It just became worse and worse that I don't feel drawn to it as often. And, of course, when I do use youtube, ads are blocked with ublock and SponsorBlock.
I don't buy stuff. I haven't bought clothes in 5+ years (new or thrifted). I pirate epubs, games, shows, and movies. I don't have any monthly subscription--no Deezer, Netflix, AppleSomething, Amazon, nothing. I grow 90% of the veggies I eat, most of the fruit. I trade for meat and bread.
I've never used Uber, UberEats, Doordash, AirB&B, or any of their competitors.
I'm happy.
That sounds kinda cool, especially the growing your own veggies part, wish I could do that
It's awesome. Real cucumbers are so tasty. Fava beans. Squash. Spinach. Sun-warmed tomatoes. Brussel sprouts. Salads. All the herbs. All the jams, jellies, and juices. And enough apple pie filling for 40 pies. I love my life.
Do you live in a city? There's a pretty cool channel on youtube that shows how to grow a garden in urban areas. Unfortunately I don't even have a balcony
I live in the ruralest part of Ruralia. Kids around here think traffic lights are made-up props found in movies.
I decided to move away from big american tech companies. When I started, the hardest part was finding an alternative to Google Maps.
I decided to be the change I want to see and have been contributing to OpenStreetMap nearly every day for 5 years as I update my local community.
Hey! That is great!
What sort of apps/software do you use to update OpenStreetMap? I would also love to do something like that. Can you do a brief explanation on how you do it, please?
There are lots of apps, desktop software, and websites. I prefer to use the default editor on openstreetmap.org called iD. Zoom in to your neighbourhood and click 'Edit' and it will open.
wiki.openstreetmap.org includes best practices and documentation for how to map each real world thing.
In iD, you can click on something in the map, on the left side it will tell you what type of feature it is. There will be a little 'i' symbol that you can click for more details and documentation that links to that specific type of thing on wiki.openstreetmap.org
community.openstreetmap.org is the place to ask questions and get help from others.
For actually using the map for finding places and getting directions, I like CoMaps best.
To add to this, Street Complete and Every Door are great for getting started. They ask straightforward questions like what's the house number of this building, or does this bus stop have seating. If you can't answer a question you don't have to, you can just go back and answer a different question instead :)
Oh, both of those (street complete and every door) are great! I have just answered a few questions. This is a really easy way to improve OSM. We should probably do a "You Should Know" somewhere. I don't think these apps are well known.
How long until the changes are accepted, do you have any idea? I already published them (by logging in my OSM account).
I'm not sure how long they take off the top of my head, but I think it's quite quick. A lot of the apps only update once a month though, so it can feel like longer
Any change is updated immediately. End users (apps) may only update every month or so, that's up to them.
Does not dying of cancer out of spite count?
Yes.
Arguably counts the most. God speed warrior.
Never in my life have I given 2 week's notice. If they can fire me without warning I can quit whenever the fuck I feel like it.
You give two weeks so you leave on good terms, not because you have to. Have you never needed a referral for a job?
Im not him, but i just use a friendly coworker, if that person is also the manager then thats just great. Ive usually worked for mega corps and large factories though. I never see the owners, just fellow wageslaves a rung or two higher on the ladder.
Tell the coworker so they can book holiday. Tell no one else.
Their wallet is bigger than ours
I don't think that's really the point that the person you're responding to is making.
I was discussing this is another sub the other day: The real issue is the stagnation of worker pay and businesses turning to business-to-business sales since consumers no longer have money. Corporations have money, and they're happy to sell products and services to each other, and make a lot more money doing it because they sell far more computing products (for example) at the Enterprise level than the consumer level already. Micron bowing out of the consumer market isn't the first in a line of dominoes, it's the last in a line that stretches back to the late 90s where business-to-business sales began to boom. The consumer market has been priced out in the West, and very arguably the vast majority of the Southern and Eastern hemispheres of the planet were always priced out of the consumer market either through trade embargoes or straight exploitation of labor. You really think the folks making Nike shoes for a few dollars a day in third world countries constitute a large portion of the consumer market? They don't, and never were. Corporations were fine without those people being part of the consumer equation, and they're aiming to be fine without us. As corporations keep more and more of the profits and less and less goes to consumers, they're building an economy that effectively doesn't need average consumers to continue to function. This is all honestly horrible, and I hate it, but the dark reality is that voting with your wallet does basically fuck-all because they already gave up on consumers a while ago. This is evidenced by stats like in the US the top 10% of earners accounting for 50% of all economic activity in the country, while the bottom 90% of earners, (the vast majority) make up the other 50% of economic activity.
Vote with your wallet all you want, but stop pretending it does more than you think it does. It doesn't mean it does nothing, but it does a hell of a lot less than it would have fifty years ago. This is purposeful, the corporate class wants us to be priced out of being able to vote with our wallets. So don't get it twisted, nobody is saying "throw money at corporations anyway" they're saying "maybe don't bank on voting with your wallet accomplishing much at all."
If all you're doing is voting with your wallet you've missed the bigger picture by a mile and just are barely making a real impact at all. In the USA, the bottom 90% is still over 300 million people, since USA is roughly 350 million people. Unless you get a massive, absolutely massive, amount of those 300 million all boycotting major corporations, you're really accomplishing fuck-all.
But by all means admonish other people for trying to open your eyes to how far down this hill we already are.
EDIT: For some proof, here's some numbers from Microsoft in 2025 -
- Devices: $17.31 B
- Dynamics Products And Cloud Services: $7.83 B
- Enterprise Services: $7.76 B
- Gaming: $23.46 B
- Linked In Corporation: $17.81 B
- Microsoft Three Six Five Commercial Products And Cloud Services: $87.77 B
- Microsoft Three Six Five Consumer Products and Cloud Services: $7.40 B
- Search And News Advertising: $13.88 B
- Server Products And Tools: $98.44 B
So for Devices, Gaming, LinkedIn, Office 365 for Consumers, Search and News all added together is $79.86 Billion, which is still less than just the Office 365 Commercial division alone. Also, LinkedIn and Search/News aren't strictly consumer, either, but I bundled them in anyway to make the point here. The income businesses make by serving other businesses already fucking dwarfs the consume market, and has for a while now.
Working on Lemmy, instead of selling my soul to a company.
Thanks for creating all this for us!
I put solar panels and battery storage on my house because my local utility is a publicly traded group of thieves. As much of the system as possible has been bought used except for the batteries.
In that, I buy used as much as possible. Fuck buying new, let someone else buy that 1100 dollar phone I'll buy it on ebay 2 years later for half that.
I deleted my Amazon and am currently de-googling the best I can.
I repair hardware where possible , buy second hand tech. Sail the seas. Running a tor relay. Only buy out of necessity
Not workin and not having kids to force them into wage servitude, now into the climate hellhole we're creating.
we must be twins.
I cycle and don't own a car. I will not be registered or licensed to move around under my own power. Do as much bike maintenance myself as I can.
I even brew my own mead
I want to get back into mead making. Crazy how fake most honey is, how do you manage? Do you just have to know a beekeeper?
Still ferments, I just use the cheapest stuff from Aldi because otherwise a gallon would cost me an absolute fortune to make. It would be nice to get into beekeeping to have my own source of honey but my garden is pretty small. Plus it looks like its quite a bit of money to spend on something when I don't really have any idea what I am doing.
It does get expensive fast. My first attempt at mead was a 5 gallon batch (sack mead, targeting like 18%) with all orange blossom honey. I don't even remember what it cost, but I totally failed.
Luckily I was able to salvage it by dumping it onto another ferment in progress, turning it into a cyser made with cosmic crisp apple juice. It was just rocket fuel in the end, though.
Can always distill rocket fuel though ... So I hear.
I did that batch in a 54 litre demijohn. There was so much! You can be sure I tried ice distilling some of it, but it was such a lot of work. Tasty though.
I like my glass demijohns but the volume of some of the plastic ones is kinda tempting sometimes. There was a guy on reddit that used a 100L water butt for fermenting in
I had to give away my prized glass when I moved from the states to the UK, I miss them. Definitely going to get more when I can finally put down roots. Plastic is certainly doable, it just isn't as pleasing.
Ahh shame to lose glass. Currently got 5x5L glass demijohns. Should probably start another mead soon, might be worth getting more bottles sometime too. Its odd, buying 20 cans seems normal, but buying 20 (more) bottles feels excessive.
I don't NEED more, but it would mean that the mead can age for longer by rotating through a larger volume.
It's true about buying bottles in volume. I eventually just ordered boxes of bottled beer from Ocado to avoid having to haul them home myself.
I haven't bought anything from Amazon, Costco, Wal-Mart, big box stores for at least 5 years now. I will also never be getting anything from places like Temu.
As well, I try to make almost all my food, shopping, etc choices to benefit something small, or someone local, that needs my money more than things that further drive the Machine in the end.
Costco is one of the rare good guys though.
Its modeled after a cooperative.
Started a mutual aid group in our small town. Mostly deals with some local agriculture etc but hoping to expand it to more community needs etc. Trying to make the local community more resilient in turbulent times
scrubs? Solid idea
Take that, Big Food Processor! I don't play by your rules.
Stopping buying things new.
Fix things and keep them, fix things and sell them on the secondhand market, or fix things owned by friends who have broken things. By applying my technical knowledge to repairing computers, appliances, tools, furniture, plumbing, I'm building my own self-sustainability, I'm enabling others to avoid buying new things and instead spend their money in better ways, I'm networking with people who have skills that I lack, I'm denying the manufacturers the revenue they would get if there wasn't someone like me to fix their shit, and I'm denying the govt the taxes involved in new purchases and income tax on my secondhand sales, and I'm denying the voracious landfill of its tasty, tasty whitegoods.
Mostly just leaning hard into ad blocking extensions and apps.
Moved out of the US, legally stopped paying earned income taxes using the FEIE via physical presence test, an IRS procedure that allows you not to pay taxes if you live outside of the US for 330 or more days out of 365 consecutive days including the day you pay taxes.
Now go through more hoops to renounce citizenship.
Taxes: everybody's hoop.
Similar to what OP is doing - minimizing consumption as much as I can, and being selective with sources when I have to. If I need something, I try to buy used first.
This includes, but is not limited to, avoiding US products and services. I still have investments, but try to focus on ESG as much as possible (though I'm aware that participating in stock markets etc is problematic in itself, but I don't have a lot of choice in the matter).
I'm also trying to move away from a profit/monetary value maximizing mindset, and want to focus on sustainability, durability and social benefits.
In reality, these are all goals that I often fall short of. But I want to keep trying and get better.
I’m trying to build a small business that replaces SSO mass surveillance (think Sign In With Google, LinkedIn, etc) with a privacy respecting alternative where the technology makes it impossible for me, the service operator, to know what the users are signing into.
I donate to open source / non-profit projects as much as I can. I'm on very few social media platforms and try to stay as private as possible with my data.
Ive started saving and only buy what i need, when needed
Mostly i buy real food, so no processed foods like corn flakes or whatever. So i avoid those asshole companies, like nestle, kelloggs etc
Clothing, here i just buy what i like.. but i buy it from good reputable brands, and if possible from local stores (i live in a tiny town but i try!)
As for electronics things are .. well impossible. So here i buy less often. I upgraded my pc this summer of 2025, and i replaced one from 2017. I hope my new one can last roughly as long. We will see (i buy somewhat high end when i do buy, because I want it for a long time)
I dont have a car currently
All the savings i can manage based on this, is going towards a house, so i dont have to rent. Though I currently dont rent from a “landlord” but more like a housing association which helps keep costs down. We are quite a bit below the avg rent price currently.
I work for a large non profit owned business, which i like
I don’t shop if i can help it. I buy used whenever possible and repair things even when the cost is almost the same as replacement. when i do have to shop, i favour small local businesses. i also avoid american goods and services like the plague.
I quit commercial Social Media and am only here and on Mastodon. So I'm not spending my time at Facebook, X, TikTok and so on anymore where they can show me ads and make money from them. I've moved most of my online stuff to a selfhosted solution and switched my computers to Linux.
The most impactful thing is something different, however: I put solar on my roof. Most of my power consumption is now from solar, which means that all those texan oil barons, saudi sheiks and russian dictators that are funding Trump, are getting less money from me. That are over 1000€ every year that I'm saving and that is not going into their pockets. And it is good for the environment, too!
My next plan. And shamefully but a FU to the energy Omani’s is a log burning stove.
I feel bad as I like to conserve, and I try to be non waste but it feels polluting.
aligning my focus back to art, people, listening, empathy, understanding,
(versus the separation they want us to live, and away from the phone that stole so much time from me)
adblocking, barely buying, if buying then second hand, gifting stuff in sharing is caring groups,
praying, staying kind and calm, spending time in nature, staying healthy
Replaced Visa/Mastercard with local payment methods and cash. No practical change whatsoever in terms of convenience, was unexpected. Also am self hosting as much as I can.
Oh, this is something I don't do, but probably should. Though I do small grocery shopping, several times, as opposed to one big one, and I do self checkout. It is so much faster to just pay with the card. It never really crossed my mind to do otherwise. I think paying with cash deserves a try though!
With self checkout here I can use the local QR code payment system that replaces the card entirely, so cash isn't always necessary. Maybe there is something like that where you live!
Using the QR code is probably still using Mastercard/Visa, no? As long as the money is being transfered directly from your bank account, it should be going throw Visa/Mastercard. Or am I mistaken?
Don't really have a good answer for you on that one, I think it depends on the payment networks where you live. Over here it goes through the local payment network that isn't Visa/Mastercard, there is a government one and a private one.
I guess here we also have JCB, but that probably costs as much as Mastercard/Visa for the merchant so I try not to use my JCB card.
This one's tough! Have you found online shopping alternatives to get stuff? Just curious.
Mostly just don't buy as much shit. When I do need something find a site that specialises in that. Some I recently used: Brew2Bottle, Heinnie Haynes, SJS Cycles
All Linux. No Amazon. Support local. Hosting my own pages, servers and not using online clouds. Changing habits on what sites to use to avoid AWS where possible
Since July I've been boycotting US companies. I've gone as far as setting up my own self-hosted home server for document / bookmark / media storage, which is actually fantastic and I wish I'd done this sooner. All streaming services have been cancelled. I only buy from European brands, and only directly from their own website (no Amazon, etc). This was the first year in a long time where I've declined a phone upgrade with my network - I'll just keep my current phone as long as possible. All my smart home tech is being gradually phased away from Google / Nest and towards Matter / Home Assistant. Windows has been wiped from my PC and I've moved to Linux. I cancelled my Adobe subscription in favour of FOSS alternatives. My family and close friends have all switched to Signal (though we did this years ago).
While I still use social media (I make digital art), the only thing I ever post on Facebook/Insta/Threads is my artwork. I don't post anything personal anymore, because that's my data.
Despite all these "sacrifices", I don't really feel like I've lost anything. In fact, things are arguably better now I'm unshackled from US tech giants. I'm saving a ton of money too from all the cancelled subscriptions.
Been boycotting Wetherspoons (a popular chain of pubs in the UK, owned by a Brexit supporting prick) for over a decade now.
Noo, Wetherspoons is Pro-Brexit? That sucks, had no idea. TBF, I'm German and haven't been in 10 years either, but my Bro studied in London for 2 years back then and I visited him 2-3 times. The Wetherspoon down the road had by far the best prices and great meal deals. Sucks that its owned by a piece of shit
Yeah it's annoying because the pubs are generally decent for the price and have a varied menu (good for a wide variety of tastes), but Tim Martin actively campaigned for Brexit and even started putting pro Brexit propaganda in the pubs both before and after the referendum.
The only commercial social media I use anymore (or at least post on) is Bluesky, and I'm getting weary of that, too. I've switched completely to open source operating systems and workflows in the past year or so. During that time I've also become vegan and am trying not to go to any sort of shop at night. That last one has nothing to do with the state of things at this very moment, but I don't want to give companies more reason to force people onto late shifts when working in retail/customer service already sucks and even full time won't get you close to a living. The last thing anyone needs is their sleep thrown off, as I know from struggling with it myself. I may not be able to stop buying things, but fuck working when you should be sleeping. Unless you're literally an essential worker, in which case those shit shifts should be cycled between people, not consistent.
...I didn't mean for that to become a rant lmao
Avoiding contributing to the economy as much as possible.
Doing business under the table, never eating at restaurants, never spending money on digital entertainment I could be getting for free.
I'm honestly a lot happier than when I was consuming.
Sounds like a fed question
Trying to build community resistance
I put bologna on their car so it eats holes in the paint. 😤
Well we could all gently suggest to people that are having a crisis in continued existance, first that we want them to remain with us, but if you must go, why not take some trash out with you? If only we could tune in somehow, we could all play the new mario brothers game multiplayer and drop out of politics.
Posting here for ideas, in trying to up my engagement.
I use Linux on my laptop and a GrapheneOS on my phone. I use almost all FOSS software, so they're not getting most of my data and selling it like they used to. In the grand scheme of things, it's not hurting any of the bigtech.
Anticonsumption. And as a logical extension of this: not reproducing.
Encouraging others to do the same.
By being very good at my job.
Nice try.
I built an encrypted, secure, takedown safe network called Tenfingers but during the roughly 10 years of building, honing and polishing it, only 2 persons have ever tried it and one was a friend. So I guess it's not really what people want 😅.
I learned a lot though.
making a list and checking it twice