The internet is a fucking scam. It promises to connect us, but we are more lonely than ever. It purports to inform us, but we're experiencing mass delirium. It aspires to build common ground between strangers, but has left us siloed, polarized, and untrusting.

Above all, it was meant to empower the individual, but it has instead consolidated power in an oligopoly of nutjobs.

But we choose to use it every single day anyway. Why? Because it's easy, and because our imaginations have been curtailed. The internet could only ever be like five surveillance-systems-disguised-as-websites, right? But here's the secret: all the demotic power that was promised with the internet, it's still there. It's just sitting unused.

My belief: we can just build our own shit. What do these tech platforms really provide us that we can't do ourselves with a little know-how and elbow grease? When the internet was first introduced, it didn't do much; so people started building decentralized, open-source technologies to make it do more things. Those all still exist! And the spirit in which they were built, a DIY, anti-capitalist, utopian, and iconoclastic vision of the future, that is still an option.

So here is something: Sign of the Times, a reimagining of social media where the “medium” is paper. It's not exactly a group chat, and it's certainly not a social network — for one thing, you can't see anybody else's profile. Each correspondent (user) gets a private workspace to create posts; once a week, the editor (a local coordinator, which for the foreseeable future is, Me) gets an email with a PDF of all the posts. I print out a copy for each correspondent, hop on my bike, and deliver it to your house.

There is no editorializing (I don't have time for that); there is no content moderation (we all know who you are); this structurally cannot scale to ensnare all of humanity; this structurally cannot have trolls or bots. There are no likes, no shares. There is no recommendation algorithm. There is no behavioural tracking, no ads (except if you wanna post one). There is no addictive, vampiric design; you can't really waste time on it. I don't think it could be bad for your mental health.

Basically it's just a fucking piece of paper with like, some posts and photos from people you know. And a nice UI to crowdsource that piece of paper.

My hope is that it will be easy and fun to use. I want you to post! No one ever posts anymore! I never see my friend's photos; I'm pretty sure we're all just collectively lurking and looking at wedding photos of people we kind of knew in high school. I wanna see stuff from the people I love and care about!

And I want it to be special. When you see your friend's writing or birthday pics or upcoming event, I don't want it to be sandwiched between an ad and a shitty comedy reel. I don't want us to swipe past each other's lives. I want us to celebrate them! So I hope that the final product will be something that you treasure, and look forward to, every week.