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?

  • EamonnMR@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    I’m a nostalgic person by nature. My impulse has always been to save rather than delete. I could never do this. In fact, I did the opposite; I made a GDPR request for my data and ran a script to download all of the posts still available in the API. No response on the GDPR request yet but they’re allowed time.