The Gardener’s Rebellion
The modern web is a chaotic, algorithm-driven Stream that leaves us drained and agitated. The only practical rebellion is to step out of the river and cultivate a Digital Garden—a space where ideas are tended, interlinked, and driven by our own curiosity, not an algorithm's whim.
I am a collector of things. Books, records, old video games, interesting shells. In the physical world, this tendency is a battle against gravity. Every object has a weight, a cost in space and dust and the quiet, persistent burden of ownership. To be a gardener of physical objects is to eventually be crushed by your garden.
But online, the physics are different. In the digital realm, there is no gravity.
This distinction is everything. It is the caveat that allows for a new kind of existence. For years, I, like everyone else, have lived in the Stream - the relentless, chronological river of social media feeds and news alerts. We are dropped mid-stream every morning and carried along by a current we don't control, from one meme to the next outrage, until we wash up, exhausted, at the end of the day.
The defining feature of the Stream is its master: the whim of the algorithm. It is not a benevolent guide. It is a calculating, indifferent god whose only commandment is Engagement. Its current is designed to agitate, to provoke, to addict - to hold our attention at any cost. We’ve seen the societal wreckage this has caused, from the funhouse mirror of modern politics to the cynical, soulless engagement bait that has rendered vast swathes of our shared digital spaces unusable. The hidden cost of living in the Stream isn't just distraction; it is the slow erosion of our own agency.
I’ve come to believe that the only practical path forward is an act of rebellion. The rebellion is to step out of the current and begin to cultivate a garden.
The Digital Garden is the rejection of the algorithm's tyranny. It is the conscious decision to build a space where ideas are not ephemeral, but foundational. Where thoughts are not just posted, but planted, tended, and interlinked. Where the goal is not to be swept along, but to wander and reflect.
This is not a fantasy. It is the reclamation of a more natural way of thinking. Think of the joy of falling down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, where one hyperlink freely and logically leads to the next, driven by nothing but your own curiosity. Think of a choose your own adventure book, where you are the protagonist of your own intellectual journey. This is the experience of the Garden. It is a space built on connection, not just chronology. A space that trusts your curiosity more than it trusts an algorithm's desire to sell you something.
To be a digital gardener is a quiet, radical act. It’s a declaration of cognitive sovereignty. It is the decision to build a weightless garden in a world that wants to drown you in its stream, a place where the only gravity is the pull of your own interest, and the only path is the one you choose to walk next.
