I have been meaning to write on this for so much time.
Unrelatedly, I have been meaning to delete my Linkedin account for so much time.
So, it is today that I decided to do both.
For me, who started playing with computers at the age of 4, computers have always been fascinating machines, but my experience of interacting with people on internet is relatively new. I do feel nostalgia for the time when we used Yahoo and Gmail messenger to talk with our relatives far away, but I was a kid at that time, and it's just nostalgia. My later use of internet consisted mostly of playing flash games on Miniclip, Friv, etc., and learning about random tech stuff to fix things for other people like, how to install Windows, how to wipe an iPhone with forgotten password, how to install a paid mobile game for free, how to install phonetic Urdu keyboard and format Urdu documents in Word, how to make printers work, how to flash a stock ROM on android device, etc.
My first interaction with people on the internet happened in 2020.
I was in grade 11, and I don’t remember how, but somehow on the internet, I learned about a place where they were providing free online courses related to tech skills. It was called DigiSkills. At that time, just the term GraPHic deSigN fascinated me so much that I enrolled in that course. A few months after, I realized graphic design is not my thing. By that time, I had accidentally stumbled upon a website-maker called Google Sites1.
Google Sites just blew my mind. How easy it was to create cool-looking2 websites for FREE3! Using Google Sites in a practical setting for disseminating information for a local community that I was part of, made me realize4 that websites were my thing. So when I figured that WordPress, the course of which was offered by DigiSkills, was a tool for creating websites, I started watching the videos of that course on YouTube5. The time was 2020 when I was in college6 but the educational institutes were closed due to Covid-lockdown.
Incidentally, using an anonymous FB profile7, I joined the Facebook group that the instructor Saad Hamid had made for those taking the course. There, Saad Hamid (who was working at Google that time) posted about CloudSeekho, an online bootcamp (though they never called it bootcamp) to learn about Google Cloud. The interesting thing was that those would finish it would get GoOgLE-branded swags. I knew nothing about cloud other than the fact that iCloud and Google Drive were cloud, but to the 16yo me, those swags looked cool. The bootcamp was aimed at CS undergrads in Pakistan, and here I was — a college-student who had chosen biology instead of computer science (just so he could avoid math8), but the bootcamp only required you to be a student and that I was. Still, I commented on that post by Saad Hamid asking if a non-CS 16-yo could do it. He replied with something that was synonymous to, it's worth giving a try. So did I.
That bootcamp (CloudSeekho S1) was my first experience interacting with people on internet. There was a slack channel for communication. I was a bit afraid about if I’d be able to do the labs that we were supposed to do, but they turned out to be pretty easy. All I had to do was start the lab, and follow the instructions. I understood very little about the different tools9 being used like load balancer, or compute instances, etc. but I could follow the instructions very precisely. It got so well to the extent that I was one of the persons helping out people telling them of some mistakes in the instructions of a few labs. Contributing to these elder people studying in UniVErSitY felt really cool. In that bootcamp, I made my first (sort-of) internet companions10 and also, my first Linkedin account.
Two individuals I continued interacting with after the bootcamp were YM and KK. The actual interactions probably weren’t that many, but when someone had something publicly shared that influenced me, like made me do something or change my behavior or perception about something, I am counting that as well. So both, KK and YM became an influence.
KK used to sketch and make illustrations and had uploaded some of them on Behance. The failed graphic designer of me, liked that. I too, made a Behance account and uploaded there some of my (failed) logo designs, photographs I had taken of birds and sky and a spider (using my father's mobile), and digitalized colored versions of two sketches of our college classroom that my only11 friend at college had drawn on paper. KK also shared with me playlist of a really cool course called "Git and Github for Poets" with me, through which I got to learn about them years before I would use them for actual code.
YM had a Medium account with some writings. That form of writing was new to me. Writings not from famous long-dead writers that some bunch of so-called academicians decided to put in our curriculum12, rather from everyday living human-beings about their experiences and thoughts. Some of YM’s writings changed my behavior about some things, and made me do some things. Inspired by YM, I started writing on Medium and started taking freelancing seriously. Before that, I used to think freelancing could only be done by full-time professionals, but YM was a living example of non-professional (professional = years of experience) student actually doing freelancing. Also, through YM, I got to know of a web-dev bootcamp that will be mentioned later.
My interest in Google Sites that had started before CloudSeekho, continued adjacent to it and also afterwards. I had learned various tricks, the coolest among which, I thought, was of getting a FREE13 domain connected to Google Sites. I made some videos about these and uploaded them on YouTube, but I couldn't find any place where people talked about Google Sites. So, I created a Facebook Group for it and shared link to it under those YouTube videos. Slowly, people started joining it. The group was small, but I could share those tricks there, and talk to other people who used Google Sites, and help them with their issues. Since, it was the pre-mobile era (atleast for me), one had to actually open Facebook to see what was there, and since there could be days when one could not open it, I thought it would be a good idea to add another moderator to the group as well. So, I made a Moderators Required post there. Only one person — JB1 — commented, who was also a teenager like me. So, I texted JB1 to ask about his experience with Google Sites, and it turned out, that he had much more experience with Google Sites than me. I happily made him the moderator and I also got to learn some random things about him, like his interest in drones and flying.
With JB1 as moderator, I no longer needed to pay that much attention to that group. And some time afterwards, I deleted my anonymous FB account, which automatically made JB1 the group admin. Much later, when I made a new FB account, I saw that he had grown that group into a thing, in a way I never could. It was very nice talking to him again. Then, again I deleted that account. Just this last year, I connected with him on Linkedin, and it was as good talking to him as before.
Back to 2020, few months after CloudSeekho, YM posted on linkedin about a free online web-development bootcamp for Pakistanis. This bootcamp, again was not called bootcamp, rather an internship, which it obviously wasn’t. By this time, I had learned about WordPress, but knew nothing about HTML, CSS, JS stuff. So, I joined it. The communication for this one, happened in an FB group where only admin could post, so it was not organized in a way, you would have many interactions with other people. If anyone had any problem with a task, they would have to comment under that week's post, and there, admin or someone else could reply explaining what's wrong in their solution. Once, I replied to a problem someone had commented under the admin’s post, explaining the issue in it. Unexpectedly, that person, JB2, later started conversation in FB Messenger. After a few days, we two were, sort of, doing this bootcamp together. We would both ask for help whenever one of us got stuck in a problem, or we just ask out each other's progress and so. That was my second (and probably last) experience when I realized learning is much more fun when done together. An interesting fact was that JB2 was an electrical engineering student and like me, was doing it as a fun side-thing.
By the end of 2020, I had started using Medium that I had gotten to know about through YM. I started writing some things14 and also started following some other people who used to wrote on Medium, one of which was 0xA. I occasionally commented on his writings, and he — who had followed me back — occasionally commented on mine. His writing theme was unlike other people on Medium. He was reader of Camus, Kafka and the like. At that time, he was in his early twenties, and I couldn't actually understand what he was experiencing by reading his creative writings about his experiences but they felt so original that I was attracted towards them. Later, when I got to university, somehow I started understanding his writings more. That is when I again reached out to him, and we started talking on email (with gaps of 5-7 months).
In 2021, I deleted my Linkedin account after a year or so of creating it. Initially, I hadn't understood the dopamine hit I would get on each comment and like, that I got on my posts. At that time, I would connect (on Linkedin) with every other person, and some of my posts had gone somewhat popular. Slowly, I started becoming conscious of this dopamine hit and it made me sick. So, I was around 17 when I quit linkedin first time.
That year, I totally revamped my Fiverr profile, and finally landed my first order. To this day, I don’t understand why MR —my first freelance client — trusted me so blindly with that order15. He was a very kind person and was undergoing cancer treatment. I was really saddened when I learned about his demise two years later.
In 2022, I moved to Lahore for university. That year, I got to enjoy a lot of solitude, and also, the freelancing thing started realizing. Later, I also re-made my Linkedin account as a strategic-compulsion16.
In 2023, I found TA1 on internet who became a heavy influence. But with him, I never interacted as such17. It started when I stumbled upon a blog that he and his friends had created when they were in university (back in 2014). Reading his blogposts, I was mesmerized. I became certain that if there was any person on Earth who could ever understand me, it was him. I read his writings like a holy scripture. I read all of his blogposts multiple times. Every Facebook, Instagram, Twitter post he made, I read. Every YouTube video made by him, or in which he appeared, I watched, multiple times. I still have a folder on my laptop with screenshots of some his posts.
That was a strange time in my life, when the absurdity of everyday lives of people had started haunting me. There were books, but my taste in reading hadn't developed that much, and I couldn't resonate much with the authors, but with TA1, I resonated deeply, and he influenced me in a way, that made me do a lot of things, which I lack the space here to explain. But in his company, I spent a great deal of time.
By the start of 2024, I started realizing that despite admiring someone, there's a limit to which you could or should imitate their style and that limit I had already hit. In his own words: There’s no template to life. I say make your own way, follow your own style and leave your own mark. TA1 gave me company when I needed it the most, but now it was time to say good-bye.
Something interesting started happening in early 2024. I started going down some interesting rabbitholes on the internet. And those rabbitholes led me to a place that I was long in search of - the unindexed web of non-corporatish personal websites.
It is very difficult to accidentally stumble upon such stuff, but it is like a thread that once you have gotten hold of, you can pull it all the way up. The metaphorical end of this thread was Curius extension. I started reading blogs, personal websites, digital gardens made by people around the world. I was like those desert Bedouins mentioned by ExupĂ©ry, who were once taken to France and were shown a waterfall, and when they were told it was time to go, they exclaimed they should wait … (for what?) … for the waterfall to finish. I was waiting for this niche content I had discovered on the internet to finish, only to realize this was tremendously more than what I could consume in my entire life; more and more of it just kept sprouting.
A little down the road in 2024, I started aggressively curating my Linkedin feed. I removed from my connections all people with whom I had never interacted. Of those connections I personally knew, I unfollowed a lot. Now, I was only following people whom I thought were doing good work. Most of them were unrelated to things I was interested in. There were designers, marketeers, typographers, etc. but they were all those whom I thought were really good at what they did. So, through one such designer whom I had started following after seeing a Karachi-bus-simulator made by him, I stumbled upon profile of another person, TA2, who was to become another influence.
By that time, I was almost sick of Linkedin (this is summer 2024 btw) because despite my aggressive attempts to curate my feed, absurdity kept creeping into it. Seeing TA2's profile was like a summer breeze. I instantly knew this was the kind of person I would have loved having as a school/ college/ university friend had he existed in those times in those places. Amusingly, the first essay/ blogpost I was redirected to from TA2’s posts, was of Henrik Karlsson18, titled "A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox". To some extent, I think, it did turn out this way, with his blogposts.
So, I sent him a connection request which he accepted, and one day, I struck a conversation with him19. It went unexpectedly good. I never had imagined that someone in their first conversation with someone on internet would invite them to tea whenever they visit his city.
The perk of having a person you resonate with, as an internet-companion is that you can ask them questions, the answers to which although they give from their perspective, somehow help you in formulation of your own perspectives. Plus, you get introduced to a whole range of content (books and internet-essays in this case) that you would love consuming. Plus, you can rant to them (in a sensible manner) about things that frustrate you. For some strange reason, when someone says, same dude, or, us bro us (not as a cliché, but in an intentional way) about something not commonly felt, it feels really satisfying.
TA2 pushed me to do some things that I wouldn't have done otherwise. But even if one doesn't explicitly nudge you to do something, when there's a chance that someone you look up to might see, you do things. One becomes less reliant of this feeling with time, but it's much helpful when one's starting out a particular sort of things.
In late 2024, once scrolling on twitter, I saw a tweet that I found much resonating. The post author had a personal website mentioned in bio. I opened it and found it amazing. I cold-emailed them telling that I loved their website. They replied with much kindness telling that they were not expecting anyone to stumble upon their website, and that they hadn't updated it in a while. I then told them that I have been planning on making my own website for some time as well, and then they nudged me to just get a very basic website with skeletal html get up within an hour of reading their email. Not within an hour, but I did that within 24 hours of reading that. That v0.1 of my website wasn't something I was too proud of. I shared it with TA2, and he shared it on his Linkedin without me asking him to do so. A lot more people than I had expected, liked that website, which in turn made me update it to v1.0 — that still was liked by more people than I had expected.
Sort of digression, but interesting. When I told about inFilter (a chrome extension I was building those days) to someone on twitter, they told me they use a twitter equivalent of it and I have been using it since then. Once, I switched to Firefox browser for a while and opening up twitter literally got me scared. It's insane how often we continue with horrible defaults when they could be drastically improved as easily as installing an extension.
One last encounter with which I would finish this stupidly-long essay20 is with JB3 who after reading my announcement of closing of my blog that I had started in 2023 (in imitation of the blog in which TA1 wrote) had contacted me to ask if JB3 could re-start that blog. I used to think that that blog existed in void, so it was interesting to learn that someone had found it interesting enough to think about re-starting it.
That brings us to today — when I have decided to quit linkedin for the third time21.
Linkedin is absurd. On the other hand, there are some interesting people on Linkedin as well (some of whom, I suppose, are there due to strategic compulsion). This makes making such a decision difficult.
However, the reason I have finally decided to quit linkedin is actually different, but quite simple. I need solitude.
If you liked reading this, you will probably enjoy reading this series of four essays by Henrik Karlsson. If somehow, you have reached here and would want to be able to hear from me about interesting things that I—at some point in future—might want to share, write me an email22.
Warmly,
TA0
Which reminds me that 3 or 4 years before that, I had stumbled upon blogger.com and had been fascinated by it as well, which makes me realize I had been stumbling upon interesting things on internet before, but I remember little of them. I will sometime try to make a proper record of those things.
contrary to the old-school blogspot themes
You don't understand the importance of free services, unless you are a kid without a bank account and who doesn’t even know how credit card works and who would get a panic-attack just by the thought of asking parents for credit card details (not because your parents are so strict, but because online transactions aren’t the norm and how would you explain them).
A digression inside digression, but this one's funny: Although I didn’t know about credit cards but even 14-yo me knew how easypaisa worked and was smart enough to convince his brother to make an easypaisa account on his SIM, into which I could get some physical cash (that I personally owned) to be deposited via a local shop, that consequently I could send to a random trader on an online p2p exchange to buy some bitcoin (back in 2018 before the hype), that in turn I could use to buy a new coin which was being offered in ICO, but wasn't smart enough to realize that it was a scam, and there was no actual coin. oops :\
realize here does not mean a global realization, but a realization that was real for that time
because in DigiSkills enrollments only opened once every 3 or 4 months and they weren’t open that time
what is called High School in US
I had no experience of using social media before this (as my parents sensibly disapproved of it), except the anonymous facebook profiles I had occasionally made (between 2017-19 when I was in class 8-10) to stalk facebook profiles of my classfellows and teachers (bcz everyone was on FB that time)
My relationship with Mathematics has changed since then
Even though I sometimes felt like an impostor for not understanding the stuff, I later realized, I had kind-of understood some basic things without realizing, like what VM instances are and how command-line works, etc.
I wanted to say internet friends but friends is a complicated word and different people mean different things by it, I might write on that some time, and I also don't want to use internet connections because of the bad taste Linkedin has given to that word
At college, I had a lot of what I now call semi-friends or acquaintances, but only this one I count as friend in retrospect.
This reminds me of a funny incident. Once, I re-read Good Bye Mr Chips (that was in our 12th class curriculum) after 12 college, and said to myself, gosh, this novel is good!
See footnote no. 3
Some of these writings I now find childish, but I feel glad that I didn’t shy away from writing, or otherwise, I wouldn’t have gotten into the habit of writing.
He was the (metaphorical) $499-client for me. I realized later after getting the $9 clients.
this term was introduced to me later by my university friend MUA, who when was nudging me to come to the welcome party we were giving to our juniors, explained me how he himself not liked to go to the party, but he was going as a strategic compulsion.
Except much later, only once, briefly, when I was tired and sleepy and was least expecting it, he himself started a conversation with me since I had commented on one of his tweets
Henrik Karlsson, is among the best writers I have found on internet.
Actually, I had intended to leave some messages, not to strike a conversation, but I wasn’t aware of TA2’s quick-replying habits.
Does this even qualify as an essay?
I can't remember when and how I quit Linkedin the second time, but my memory recalls of a second account that I had closed before this one. This sounds strange but it is what it is.
I like email because I prefer spaced communication over instant one.
Also, My
email
address is x@gmail.com where x = aiktamseel