Do I Even Like Computers?

Do I Even Like Computers? Published: 2026-10-25 In which we have a cheeky little existential crisis. Illustration by j-g00da. License: CC0. A visceral sense of exhaustion is what I feel when I interact with computers and computing communities these days. Exhausted by the way people talk to each other online. Exhausted by how it has spilled into real world conversations and attitudes. Exhausted by the endless churn and by the way The Next Best Thing is constantly shoved in my face. I don’t know where my passion for this stuff went, or if I even really had it in the first place. Surely I had passion when I was working as an intern during university and got quite good at JavaScript. I felt like I was actually an expert on my team, and that was a nice feeling. Surely I had passion when I started self hosting — putting a 1U rackmount server with AMD Opterons in my studio apartment’s only closet — and running various services in Proxmox VMs. I felt cool and that was a nice feeling. Surely I…