Shiraishi Kouji's Occult. I really love Noroi by the same director, and as such, I've been intending to watch Occult for a while. Now that I've finally managed to do it... It's fantastic! It has all the qualities Noroi has as a mockumentary/found footage hybrid (superb acting, good pacing, intricate worldbuilding, etc.), but changes things up by going for a more weird fiction direction.

The director self-inserted himself (quite well, in fact) as one of the protagonists and even invited Kurosawa Kiyoshi to make a cameo as an actually important character in the film; all of that raises the cool factor of it even more.

Seja bem vindo a este humilde recinto It's cool to have another fellow Brazilian here. People here are quite welcoming, I'm sure you're gonna adapt yourself well.

I felt such a shift slower than people around me, and I've also been partially (and unwillingly, though gladly) pulled back to something more akin to the old days recently.

When I started using the Internet around 2008/2009, Brazil was transitioning from dial-up ubiquity to "wow, I can download files at 150 KBps!" broadband connections. Dial-up time wasn't that limited, and I could use it for a few hours; still, it forced patience upon me, something that remained useful as my house transitioned to still fairly low-speed and unstable broadbands. Even as I stayed hours in front of the screen—school was always easy for me, as I was a curious kid with a nerd father and Internet access since 7; I never had to spend too much time studying—those were hours used actively, exactly as you've described.

My school classmates started getting sucked into the smartphone craze around 2012, and it fully normalized for them around 2013. I got one by 2014 and only got used to it by the end of 2015, as my girlfriend at that time used it a lot and got me into it. Here in Brazil, Whatsapp is unfortunately almost as quintessential to all daily activities as breathing is; everywhere and for everything, one is forced to use it. This became worse when I entered college in 2017, and as much as I've always hated phones and preferred desktops and laptops over them, I couldn't escape normalizing their usage.

As you've said:

More recently it feels like the internet is something that's being done to us.

I started enjoying it after a while. What brought me out of it was COVID-19—as my college suspended all in-person activities from 2020 to 2021, I was suddenly brought back to my days of 10-hour desktop usage. I was slowly but surely confronted with boredom and the feeling that even the good old drug of notifications wasn't enough to escape from it. Quite ironically, it was devising a healthier, more active, and old-school way of spending my time in front of the screen that saved me from rotting away waiting for Twitter notifications. I started using Linux (inb4 "I use Arch btw"), got into ricing, was seduced by the digital gardening movement (and more recently by Web Revival), returned to retro gaming, started reviving many old hobbies... In short, I did a lot.

When in-person internships returned by late 2021 (and in-person classes and research activities earlier this year), I had gotten used to active computer and Internet usage again. Even if I wanted to use my phone more, I wouldn't be able to—the software I use, the workflow for my studies and research, my hobbies, they're all not amenable in the slightest to the shape and capabilities of phones anymore. While I still use regular social media, my time there is far more limited, and my usage more purposeful.

More importantly, my routine regained a clear division between offline and online as I spend most of my time writing, reading, and studying. Most of the tools I use today are offline or hybrid. I've integrated digital and analog in my workflow, handwritten notes becoming OCRed or re-typed and vice-versa. My phone is at most a boom box/Walkman or a tool to show memes to the friends I'm talking to in-person nowadays. I started using slower forms of communication (such as email) more regularly. Reading longform content more than tweet-shaped thingies has also been helping a lot. I also (almost) stopped using Spotify and went back to torrenting/soulseeking (I was never into movie streaming thankfully).

In short, life became ritualistic once again. They're small things, but they surprisingly brought back some sense of individual historicity that I had utterly lost.

I used to be like that in the (fairly recent) past. I've been trying to force myself out of it because I desire to expand and diversify my tastes.

I think it's because back then it took so many hours to download a single song, I had to make do with what few songs I had. But even when we got high speed internet in high school, I maintained the habit to the point where friends would make fun of me for it. I still do it to this day, though.

I got the same habit thanks to the very same reasons.

I've been repeating 天界のペルソナ by Shizuka a lot nowadays. It's been raining cats and dogs where I live, the perfect atmosphere for such kind of music. There are multiple versions of the song - the ones I'm currently listening to the most are these:

PBPs are the very reason I can decently read and write English nowadays. I managed to join a few of them during 2013-2014; the one in which I was most active was Call of Time, a TES V: Skyrim PBP. Unfortunately, it's currently dead.

I have many fond memories of the people I've met and the stories I've participated in there.

Had a good session with a patient today. I like being a (soon-to-be) therapist.

Firefox. I don't really like it, but it's the only browser that allows me to customize it as much as I want to while still being pretty usable. I wish it had a native hypothes.is extension though.

Despite its many, many flaws and shortcomings, I can't imagine the internet without Wikipedia (and its sibling projects).

I can't imagine myself without it. There's no better place to serve as the pillar for my trivia-collecting habits than it.

Disney's Animated Storybook - Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree. I used to love Pooh when I was a kid, and my dad bought this for me along with VHS tapes of the many Pooh series and movies available at the time.

It's still a vibe to this day. And it got me into computers very soon in my life.

I know its not k-pop but there are a few j-pop bands I listen too! (I hope there is not some unspoken rivalry between the two that I don't know about...)

There has been for quite some time (and it's not unspoken to be honest), but not only it has never stopped a quite regular influx of artists/idols between both from happening, it's quite common to like bands, groups and soloists from both too. I myself got into k-pop thanks to j-pop!

From j-pop (or more generally, any kind of Japanese contemporary pop), I like TENDRE, Wednesday Campanella, SHE IS SUMMER and Pizzicato Five.

This screams summer to me. And TES IV: Oblivion, for some reason.

LOONA, Red Velvet and Dreamcatcher are my favorite groups, though I listen to a few more other than them (and to soloists - Hoody and Yukika in particular.)