Every once in a while, I reset my digital life. It’s a habit that goes back to 2010, when I first cleared my Twitter post history, and over time it has grown in scope. My latest reset was this past week.
Why Cleaning Up Online Is Good For Me
There are a lot of reasons I regularly clean up my digital life, but they can all be summed up in one sentence: what I put online, especially in places I don’t own, has no reason to be permanent.
Arguments, low-effort posts, drunk posts, and general shitposts have no reason to last. They offer no value to me or anyone else, and they often are not even an accurate reflection of what I believe, whether because my views have changed or because I posted out of anger or under the influence.
Work is one example. I’ve had plenty of jobs over the years, and few of those companies are places I would want to promote today. Removing those references from old posts feels right. The same goes for posts I made after a night out. None of that needs to stay online.
In the end, I want what I post online to be something I’m proud of. Anything that falls short of that is not worth keeping, and a reset helps me get back to that place.
What I Cleaned Up
I cleaned up more than ever this year:
- I deleted all posts on Mastodon, Bluesky, and LinkedIn
- I reset my watch history on all our streaming services
- I logged my devices out of every account that keeps a login history
- I wiped my music and podcast libraries
- I wiped my Apple Health history
- I deleted more than two dozen accounts
- I removed apps and configurations I was no longer using
- I wiped my Feedbin library
- I cleared my location histories on every service I know of that keeps them
- I cleared history of games and other apps
Basically, if it was data about me that I could access and delete, I did. This year’s reset was even more extreme than previous ones, where I kept things like my Apple Health database. In fact, the only things I tried to preserve this time were this site and my reading history.
Now it’s time to move forward again, at least until the next reset. I’m happy with it. It feels like a clean slate, and I’m looking forward to making the best of it.