I don’t have a personal account but I live in near a tourist destination not far from the border and there were still plenty of BC license plates around this year (though a big drop compared to last year, and I don’t blame them). In other words a lot of people are still making it through apparently.

Reposts aren’t a problem. Just because you’ve seen it before doesn’t mean everyone else has also seen it before. Don’t worry about them and just move on.

Money is unavoidable but you don’t have to do a typical career. Maybe you could try one of those English teaching jobs overseas, or be a nomad doing odd jobs here and there and traveling around. Lots of paths out there, and some might be more care free than a typical 9-5.

Have you considered becoming a student? You might be able to get financial aid. It might not cover 100%, but you’d get to be around young people also discovering themselves.

You definitely didn’t deserve what you got. I hope you can find a path that feels at least a little more like what you want to be doing.

I’m from the US and this also sounds extremely puritanical to me. I don’t know why this OP thinks they’re somehow being liberal about it.

Bad policies don’t make it OK, and blaming the victims also doesn’t make it OK.

I kind of hate takes like these because its such a false equivalence. People aren’t OK with it, but the vast majority of people don’t have time to fight this battle when every single aspect of modern technology is in a constant arms race to do more and more surveillance.

It’s great there are people like you who want to promote more private alternatives, and even better that people are making more private alternatives, but the reality is most foss apps are far inferior user experiences to corporate apps. Until that changes it’s always going to be an uphill battle to convince people to switch, and it’s not because they’re “ok with corporate surveillance”. That isn’t even in the calculation to begin with and it’s not making any friends or building any bridges to imply that about people. You would help your cause a lot if you took a less judgemental approach to spreading the word about it.

Sorry for the soapbox, but I see this attitude on here a lot and it really misses the mark and does damage to an otherwise worthy cause (spreading the word about better software). I don’t think you mean anything bad when you say this, but I just want you to understand how it comes off to people who aren’t invested in that lifestyle.