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Can I call it my city now..? I feel like I really came into my own self here. It feels like home. I know where I’m going. I love my neighbours. People are kind.
(Toronto btw)
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I wasn’t born here, but I was raised here & I used to resent that about my upbringing. I didn’t understand why I had to be raised away from my culture in a place that only made me feel alien but now that I’m older I’m finally beginning to appreciate it.
I was raised here but I’m seeing this city in a way that I never have before. It’s so serene & quaint. I love how many local coffee shops we have & how rich we are in grass & trees. I love that my identity makes me unique, & it’s refreshing to meet other people like me in this southern, suburban city. It’s lovely here.
Oct 29, 2024
Feb 26, 2025
i was born here but haven’t lived here since i was a few months, before moving back for university. i’ve always wanted to live in an urban area with a lot of young, college aged people, and this is the perfect place for that. there are always festivals, thrift pop ups, art gallery openings, historical buildings and events to go to which i love. i enjoy meeting strange people who are part of various scenes, going to the goth club and spending time with my interesting friends. the public transportation is also great, since i don’t have a car and don’t plan on getting one either.
there is however a very large homeless issue that has been going on for years, and a housing crisis, and even my favourite cheap sandwich place has had to jack up their prices, but what can you do.
i plan on staying here for university and possibly moving away for post-grad, but this place will hold a very special place in my heart forever
Oct 27, 2024
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I made a Goodreads account recently and it asked me to rate some popular books I’d read before. Little did I know, every time I ranked a book, it would give me 5 more similar to that one, and then 5 more from that, and on and on until a neverending phylogenetic tree of books emerged on my screen.
I was on FaceTime with my friend as I did this, and we compared which books we’d both read, ones we loved, ones we got forced to read in school, ones we read as preteens, etc. But half an hour in and no end to the Goodreads algorithm, but stuck in The Very Hungry Caterpillar-y children’s book branch of the algorithm tree that I couldn’t escape, I started to get mad. So I command-Q’d chrome and called it a day.
This week I went back to organise my To Read list and to purge all the loose one-book memos on my notes app. My professor recently gave me her recommendations on queer literature and I wanted to properly organise them. On my profile it said I’d already read some 100+ books and I’d given them all 5 star ratings. Ok well now that’s pissing me off. Why is there digital clutter on my brand new account, and why did I give all that information to them anyways.? I love to categorise, but did I really need to log my readership of the individual 39 Clues books?
I feel similarly about when I first downloaded letterboxd and it made me go down a similar never ending algorithm of potential movies I’d watched before. I did spend an unreasonable amount of time swiping through those movies trying to remember if I really did watch Horton Hears a Who in 2008(?) or not.
Why do I feel the need to share this with the algorithm? genuinely what purpose does this serve me? Why am I volunteering memories from my 7 year old self when I learnt English by reading Geronimo Stilton books for the first time?
Anyways, I deleted all the past data from my Goodreads account. There’s only logs from my current reads, and the list of books I want to read next. There’s comfort in organising and seeing your life laid out in list/grid categories, like unlocking achievements on video games - oh did you know I read so and so and yeah I was a pretentious little bitch in high school and every YA book I read in 2013 has gotta be logged and
But there’s another type of comfort in keeping that information away from the internet where they’ll find a way to use that data against you. I can‘t think of a single occasion I’d need personalised ads for the chick-lit books I read in primary school but I know the algorithm is going to eventually find a way to sell my nostalgia back to me somehow… I‘m going to open any of my little apps and see hyper specific #ad on my screen.
I know I’ve given so much of me away online already - and look what I’m doing right now(!) , sharing my interests and recommendations to strangers online hah .. I won’t lie about the fact that it brings me joy to live online - it’s been my playground for so much of my life - Like sorry I am literally the internet explorer -But there was a time before I lived on the internet. I don’t think they need to know everything about Then.
I recommend not giving up everything about yourself to the machine
Mar 8, 2024
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Rawdog the sound of society while you walk… the tea is crazy
May 17, 2024