I’m not usually one for making New Year’s resolutions but when 2025 crept up on the calendar, I did make a vow to shrink my online presence to sites I trust. It’s taken a while (I was taken aback to realize how entangled I was) but I have made real progress.

For example, my Amazon Prime account has ended. I’ve also turned away from the news from all the so-called “legacy” newspapers and television sites such as the Washington Post, New York Times, and CNN, etc.

I do not participate in social media. I do not have a Facebook or X or Instagram account. (I tried Facebook once, years ago, and frankly found it boring.) I’ve hit the unsubscribe button so many times in the past few weeks to get rid of the commercial grunge that pollutes modern life, I’ve almost worn the button out.

And I am loving it.

I don’t know about you but I’ve become disillusioned with both social and “legacy media” to the point where I don’t trust any of them at all. I dislike the slimy feel of their algorithms feeding on my brain, soaking up my attention, and sucking on my wallet. I find myself thinking, again and again, of the Star Trek monster called the Borg, an alien group that thinks with a hive mind, and uses those they conquer to power the hive. It’s the same scenario with the Daleks from Dr. Who. They are a monstrous creation with only one goal: “Exterminate.”

That is what the internet has become–the Borg and Daleks.

For me, the final push to get rid of all of this dreck came from Jeff “Bozos” when he interfered with the Washington Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris and then censored a cartoon by Ann Telnaes.

Why is he so afraid of a cartoon? And do you really want a quivering coward like Bozos to control anything you do or buy?

My favorite columnist from the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin, left that newspaper when Telnaes was censored to start a Substack media company called The Contrarian and my favorite New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, is now a contributor there.

And then, of course, there’s the inimitable Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson, again on Substack. Seriously, she is doing incredible work.

I’ve switched to the Guardian of London for a straight news feed, and I have read and supported the thoughtful Talking Points Memo ever since Shrub (doesn’t he seem so benign now?) was President.

And none of these choices are owned by obscenely wealthy white men so there’s no lies, and no bloviating, and no algorithm-based life forms.

And I am here to report that it’s INCREDIBLY FREEING! I still know what’s going on without obsessive reading (I don’t watch or listen to news–haven’t for years), I feel better (which was the whole point of this exercise), and I have more time for my own writing and creating.

That to me is a win-win-win-win.

So give yourself a moment of paradise today. Hit that unsubscribe button.