title: “A Life Offline” date: “2026-09-25” description: “I grew up with computers as an escape from life. Now, after years of dial-up, LAN parties, forums, games, and social media, I find myself wanting to escape from the internet instead. Maybe there is still a life worth living offline.” —

A life offline

I’m a millennial, which means I got to witness the “birth” of the internet as we know it. When I was a child, a few centuries ago, before the dinosaurs, I had a computer without internet. It was just for playing pinball, drawing in Paint, and my father used it for work. I couldn’t use it for a long time, less than an hour, but it was enough for me. My life was climbing trees, playing soccer, playing tag, stealing fruit from the neighbors. It was fun.

When I grew up, we already had internet at home, but it was dial-up. I still couldn’t use the computer for very long, maybe one hour per day, but I was a smart kid. I would wait for my parents to fall asleep, then cover myself and the PC with a blanket to access the internet. The blanket, if you don’t know, was because the internet was so noisy that it could wake up the entire house.

During this time, I liked reading some forums. Most of them were about games. I don’t remember all of them, but one was about Counter-Strike. I needed to play this. In the morning, I would take some coins from my mom and go to a LAN house. I played every day. That was so cool. I made friends, played games, ate some snacks, and it felt like my birthday, even though it wasn’t.

I started playing a lot of games, like Commandos, Quake, and Half-Life, but everything started with CS. I became a reader too, not so much. At this time, I didn’t speak English yet, but there were a lot of blogs and forums in Portuguese. Sometime later, I heard about Orkut. I read about political debates, religious debates, health debates, debates about debates. Everyone was talking about something, but it was still a nice place to escape from school.

Then came the beginning of the end of the days, the end of humanity, the source of all pain and modern suffering: Facebook. Orkut, at this point, became an old-man place. Everything cool was on Facebook. We had FarmVille, where you could steal from your friends, and the worst of all, the poke, where some random weirdo would poke you 173 times in a single hour. The internet was fast now. Being a jerk cost nothing. The trolls rose through Facebook, but who cares? There was fucking Call of Duty: Black Ops with an awesome Zombies mode. That was an amazing moment, but nothing compared to 2012, CoD: BO2, the peak of life.

The internet was so fast, games became more realistic than real life, and we could play for hours on end. We could join groups on Facebook, meet some girls, pay for their food, discover that she was a fat guy, fall for the same catfish again, learn the lesson, discover that your best friend fell for the same scammer, make a joke about him, and never talk about your catfish. That was funny.

So, 2014. Brazil collapsed. Okay, this happens every year. That’s not a good place to live, but this year the internet became a no-man’s-land. The debates we had on Orkut followed us to Facebook, but now they were more intense than ever. There were fathers against sons, sons against mothers. Before, the internet was a place to escape from life. Now, it was an extension that expanded the problems from real life.

Ten years later, it’s still the same no-man’s-land, but worse. Facebook sold our data. We do not consume the internet. We became the product. Every single social network started selling our data, pulling in extremists, trolls, haters, and everyone who could make more views on posts. Sell, sell, sell everything. Sell the hate, the weird, the slop. Who cares? They are products!

What has the internet become? What has life become?

When I was a kid, I remember the sky being so colorful and bright. There were so many birds tweeting. Now, the only bright thing is the fake colors of AI slop on X.

Playing games was so cool. There was AOE, CS in LAN houses, and even chess and pinball were fun. Computers used to be an escape from life. Now, I have to go to the countryside, waterfalls, and parks to escape from the internet.

Sometimes, especially at the beginning of a new day, I feel a force pushing me away from the internet. I don’t have an account on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or any social media. To be honest, this movement makes me feel happier. I have more time to study and focus on my job.

Why is everyone angry or depressed on the internet? What’s going wrong with us? Where are we going? I think I don’t want to go there. We must return. As C.S. Lewis said:

“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it’s pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We’re on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.” (The Case for Christianity)