I nuked my Reddit accounts today. Deleted all comments and posts, then the accounts themselves. The tool I used showed each comment as it was deleted, and it was bittersweet.
I watched old gaming and movie discussions I barely remember appear and then get flagged as deleted. Communities I once participated in and then moved on as the years past flashed by. I remembered how I felt back then, and then watched them scroll on into oblivion.
Now I feel…I guess it’s grief. Sadness for that part that’s gone. Sadness that it’ll never be there again. Like footprints on a beach wiped away by the tide. It’s like it never happened. There is no trace.
And I feel anger. Mad that it came to this. Mad that I let a corporation have so much of my time and thoughts. Mad that they made it clear my life was nothing but a product to them.
It’s over now. Time for a new chapter.
Anyone else have strong feelings about losing a part of the past like this?
I really just wanted to be done and gone from reddit, to be honest. My reaction when something like this happens isn’t to make a big scene. I just delete my content and vanish into the ether. Only time I actually made a farewell post was Facebook, and that was just to let my friends/family know how to continue to contact me. With Twitter I just nuked my posts and killed the account.
Reddit can probably filter/censor any sort of fediverse spam anyway, so it just seemed like extra steps at this point.