I immediately understand the vibe and plight this guy was trying to illustrate

I’ve never used Tutanota but been a Proton Unlimited user for a few years now. I definitely like the mail service, and Drive and VPN are nice but can be slow, especially Drive. Everything else I don’t have much use for, and honestly I cringe when I see the new stuff they’re working on. Not that any of it’s bad, but it feels like they’re in the “can’t just make a good product” camp, constantly trying to add on new stuff instead of focusing on quality. Could have it all wrong, though, I’m just a person, not an analyst.

Yeah, most people aren’t on social media to see “what their friends are up to,” they’re there for the memes, the culture, the brands (including pop artists), whatever the latest “thing” is. Mastodon doesn’t have any of that, or at least it’s very hard to find.

Everyone’s made good suggestions, but I wanted to throw out there that I just recently learned Kubuntu actually has been making its own line of custom-made laptops for a while, called Focus. There’s a few different models, and IIRC one or two configurations are below $1000. You’ll definitely save a buck by going with Windows-first options, but if you want to support Linux that’d be one way of doing it.

So what you’re saying is that in the year 2062, every college bro is gonna have a Morbius poster in their dorm room

False, my employer would never also get us breadsticks and dip.

Yeah, overpriced + wellness culture nonsense