When I closed the antique store I dropped all my social media accounts.

I don’t have accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest.

I have never had accounts with instagram or Reddit.

I have never snapchatted, or Tik Toked.

I deleted my google account and don’t (in fact I refuse to) use Gmail.

I rarely use YouTube and I don’t have access to Microsoft Teams.

I am not linkedIn.

If I have to create an account on a website to view an article, I won’t. I will find it somewhere else.

If I have to scan a QR code to see a menu, I leave.

I won’t leave a google review, so don’t ask.

I don’t have any of this garbage on my computer and better still, none of it is on my phone.

I don’t have to look at my phone at every traffic light. I don’t have to look at my phone while I am driving. I don’t have to look at my phone while I am watching television, or while I am eating dinner.

I don’t have to ignore people I am with because I have to check my phone every thirty seconds.

There is a lot of things I don’t do on my phone.

I don’t…

shop on my phone,

watch videos on my phone,

check my email on my phone,

order food on my phone,

buy groceries on my phone,

use maps or directions on my phone.

In fact, just about the only things I regularly use my phone for are making and receiving phone calls and sending texts. (I will admit to taking the occasional photo for a project I am working on or if I don’t have a camera on me). Most of the time I even have the internet turned off on my phone. I use it maybe two or three times a year at most.

Not surprising, I have never used AI. I have never even opened one the company’s websites even for a look. It doesn’t interest me in the least. I don’t like it and I don’t want it. If I have to pay for a game online, I choose not to play.

All in all, I am pretty happy with this arrangement. I used to be what they called “an early adopter”: someone who was really in front of trends with electronics and tech and always had the newest, coolest thing. Well, not so anymore. In fact I am still using a Samsung Galaxy 7 phone. Yup, that’s and eleven year old phone. Not sure how old that is in cell phone years.

And you know what? I am okay with it. Most new phones run about a thousand dollars. That’s 10K I am ahead by not buying a new phone every year and even if I went with Verizon’s “New Every Two” program that’s still 5K in my pocket.

Now add all the apps, I have never paid for, all the subscriptions I don’t have and you can see that is a substantial savings. Just from not having to have the latest upgrade. Think about it. What is piece of mind worth as well?

The more crap they to to jam down our throats, the more resistant I get. I just spent nearly an hour trying to get my wife’s phone and car talking again after the car decided to install an app that we never installed nor knew about nor wanted. It did it by itself, even though it was already doing what it was supposed to.

But when you remember that I like antiques and old stuff, it makes sense. I am into vinyl records, and reel to reel tapes and vintage film cameras. Laser discs, oh yeah. The movies look great but it is getting harder to find 30 year old players that still function (I don’t know why someone doesn’t make a new one. There is a huge market for them!).

If it works, it works. The quality is still there on 60 year old vinyl LP’s and tapes. Amazing. Don’t get me wrong, I have a ton of CD’s & I have streaming hooked up to the stereo, it’s just you don’t need to get rid of what you have because something new came out.

I don’t subscribe to planned obsolescence and you shouldn’t either. If it breaks, I try to fix it. If I can’t fix something, do I really truly own it? I remember when you bought software, you got discs. You could put it on any PC you wanted and when that PC broke, you put that software on the new one, because you owned it. You bought and paid for it.

Now, if you change the hard drive in your pc because it fails, guess what? You have to re-buy the software. If you swap out the motherboard for a faster one? Yup, buy it again because the license has been used and they consider it a new computer. Well if you swap out the engine in your car, guess what, it’s still the same car.

I am a photographer so I bought Photoshop 4 and the upgrade to version 5 and let me tell you they weren’t cheap. When version 6 came out, guess what? You can’t buy it, you can only subscribe to it. The license is only good for as long as you pay monthly. Same now with Microsoft Windows Office, yearly subscription. More money charged for the exact same products you used to be able to buy once and own. That doesn’t work anymore. Me? I went to a free open source office suite. No fees, and regular updates. Heck, I might even take an old PC and put Linux on it. Might be fun.

You know who got rich doing this in the past? Howard Hughes’ father. He invented a superior drilling bit for the oil industry. Could you buy a Hughes bit? Nope. You rented them. When they wore out or you broke one, you rented a new one.

I for one am over this nonsense. I want to buy a quality product and own it. I want to fix it if it breaks and I want it to last. I don’t think that’s too much to ask. What does record profits mean? Greed.

I mean seriously, 4G was working just fine for me.