Damn Snowden

I'm glad Snowden did what he did.

However, since his revelations, I have ruined my life.

• I deleted so many accounts: YouTube, Gmail, Facebook, Spotify, LinkedIn, Twitter. I used to have a huge following on YouTube that got me a lot of job offers and new connections. Now they're gone and I don't know how else to find people or get myself out there.

• Cut up my credit cards, which has severely limited my ability to purchase things, especially airplane tickets

• Gotten into countless arguments with people over using GPG and encrypted chat / phone apps.

• I'm constantly stressing out about what domain services to use, how to securely pay for them, which hosting service to trust, trying to run my own web server without spending hours maintaining it, and so much more. I feel like it takes me 2 weeks to make decisions that before took me 5 minutes.

• I can't even get a job because I'm terrified of giving out my public email and phone number to the companies. For a while I was requiring GPG and RedPhone, and no company called or emailed me back.

• I feel so lonely and stressed out, all in the name of threats that I can't even prove are really a problem. Yeah, so the government, corporations, and other evil people might be a danger, but then I see all of these successful, rich, young YouTubers who are out living their lives without worrying about data dangers, and then I look at my life, and it fucking sucks.

• I carry around 2 phones because I can't decide whether I should stick with my shitty Cyanogenmod Android or my iPhone. I want to boycott Apple, but the other phone works so poorly. I could buy a new Android, yeah.

• I sold my car and only use public transportation or cabs to get around because I don't want to be tracked by a license plate. This makes hauling stuff around a major problem. Any time I want to lug heavy equipment somewhere or go on a road trip, I have to pay ridiculous prices for a cab or carry so much luggage with me.

I hate to go back and give in to everything again. I believe in ethics and privacy, and I don't want to compromise myself just to socialize. But I'm losing hope. I feel like the Snowden leaks have made my life much worse than it would've been had I remained blissfully ignorant.