Why I Ditched the Algorithm (and Why Success is Failure)

Hello and welcome back to Carl vs Reality. I'm currently sitting right back up in my podcasting tree, about a twenty-five-minute trek out into the coastal wilderness to find a bit of peace and tranquillity, only to have a massive, deafening fighter jet go roaring back and forth right over my head'which is a bit of a perfect metaphor for life lately, isn't it? I've been away from the microphone for a while because I made the mistake of trying to chase the algorithm, slicing the show up into these little thirty-second, out-of-context clips for TikTok and Instagram just because people kept asking how many listeners I get, and honestly, it became a completely demoralising chore. It made me realise that what the modern internet calls "success"'chasing views and signing sponsorship deals with crap companies'actually feels like failure to me, so I've completely ditched the corporate apps and found this brilliant movement called the IndieWeb, where people are just self-hosting their own personal blogs and using decentralized networks like Mastodon without any algorithms messing with your head. It feels exactly like the old-school internet back in the day, so I'm completely self-hosting this podcast now, starting an independent blog because I'm a bit of a hipster, and running down to the beach to record some nice ambient nature sounds of the sea, assuming that jet has finally buggered off.