I’ve been thinking about how to interact with social media for a while now.
Facebook has been dead to me for over a decade. I’ve never posted a picture on Instagram, despite having an account. Twitter was fun & magical for a time, but eventually gave way to brands and doomscrolling and whatever the current 🔥 is. For years I’ve been a member of both social and work Slacks, and that’s great as a way to connect with friends, coworkers, and to participate in the micro-communities that develop and evolve there. Seems like many people have done the same on Discord.
One of the patterns I’ve observed in myself is sharing a tweet or article on Slack, usually in some appropriate topic channel. A bit of discussion usually ensues, usually supportive given the captive or friendly self-selected topic audience. Usually a flurry of reactji are applied. Instead of the internet popularity contest of “going viral”, it’s finding the fun stuff from the web and chatting about it with your internet & real life pals (who are plugged-in enough to join a social Slack). For friends not quite as online, it’s SMS or iMessage threads to share today’s funny or interesting content.
Then I think about the good ol' days of RSS and blogs, and the joy of just finding cool stuff online. The legendary linkblogs like kottke.org and waxy.org come to mind. Then chatting with friends at the coffee shop or over dinner about the latest “stuff”. Sometimes I get a little sad that blogging never became a habit for me, but in hindsight that’s probably okay because being a “blogger” was never a goal. I don’t need to tell my story or promote anything, but it’s still cool to share the day’s good internet stuff in some way that’s easier than the fragmented mix of Slacks and iMessage threads I’m using today. Maybe that’s unrealistic, but I can dream.
So, now to where I am today. Mastodon has replaced Twitter for me, and the Fediverse has presented interesting options for sharing. Of note, Micro.blog stood out to me as an interesting mix of sharing and loosely-federated community. I love the personalization and control. I really love that it has a business model that isn’t “show ads and maybe sell your data and hope we get acquired someday”. Despite having an account for over a year, this is my first post and I’m going to give it a proper try.
Let’s see if I can break my current “share in all the private places” habits 🤞. Feel free to poke me if I don’t keep it going.
