This was originally titled “I miss when computers were fun”. But in the course of writing it, I discovered that there is a reason computers became less fun, a dark thread woven through a number of events in recent history. Let me back up a bit.
The only way I can think of to break out of that is to not play the game at all - e.g. instead of Windows vs. Mac, make FOSS Linux, and instead of Facebook vs. Reddit, make Lemmy, Mbin, and PieFed. On the other hand, people that already own a house have greater abilities to donate their time to such coding efforts, whereas younger people today… not as much.
The only way I can think of to break out of that is to not play the game at all - e.g. instead of Windows vs. Mac, make FOSS Linux, and instead of Facebook vs. Reddit, make Lemmy, Mbin, and PieFed. On the other hand, people that already own a house have greater abilities to donate their time to such coding efforts, whereas younger people today… not as much.