the longer you spend using software that does not make deliberate efforts to run your inner peace through a wood chipper in order to monetize it
the more jarring it is using something that does
when commercial OSes insist on putting the weather on the lock screen whether we ask for it or not, that is the company advertising its own services to us, that is the company clamoring for our attention and telling us we need to be thinking about the weather rather than just quietly existing
people who are used to putting up with that one don't even recognize it as an intrusion, and when we call it an "advertisement" without explanation, people are confused. that's fair enough, but from outside, from a baseline position of not giving up any of our internal calm and quiet to external corporate demands for it, it stands out, it's obvious
we do suspect that our actions on this topic come off as extreme, but, like
we do not use things that have ads in them. it is not worth it to us. it's just completely not worth it, there is no way that it is ever going to be an experience we're glad to have had. we're glad that it's not a big deal to other people, but we have the self respect and self awareness that it is a big deal to us
similarly, we are also highly skeptical of using things that change their layout completely every six months because somebody needed to justify their promotion so they did a redesign. that is not respectful of our time, and it is not worth it. none of the things that programs like that can do for us, are worth devoting part of our brain to understanding how they work only to have the rug pulled out from us just when we're starting to get it.
we prefer software that stays where we put it, that only changes when we ask it to change. we also prefer software that doesn't demand attention, that waits until we choose to pay attention to it and then only tells us the answers to the things we asked rather than trying to tell us lots of other stuff for its own ends.
again, we're sure this comes off as extreme to someone. we can't help that, but we're not doing it for anyone else's sake, we're doing it for our own. we're quite serious about the "inner peace" framing.
this isn't an ideology, in the sense that it's not a worked-out philosophical position that encompasses many areas of philosophy and has been written down in a book that someone could go read to learn about it. this is just a personal belief on one small topic, and it's a belief we held for many years before we had any words for it
we also have no particular reason to think it's the same as anybody else's reason for preferring free software and community-driven tooling
but it's ours, so we figured we'd explain it, since we've seen questions going around and we're not sure whether those questions are meant to apply to us
we make our physical home as beautiful as we can, because we spend all our time living in it, it affects our mood through the day and through the night, when our home is clean and our furniture is aesthetically pleasing and free from distractions - except the specific distractions we actively chose to put there, such as the record collection! - then we are happier, calmer, more peaceful, more able to live the life we want
we make our computing environment as beautiful as we can for all the same reasons
[the fedi version of this post is the thread at https://adhd.irenes.space/@ireneista/statuses/01JHP0JGDDNHDC4VR9S153ZBWC]