Surfing the Twitpocalypse

[the_gneech]

Well the whole "will he/won't he" scenario went down via the worst possible result, which is unfortunately the tendency of this timeline. #FuckThisTimeline But now that Oblong Putz has started Twitter careening towards the nearest brick wall, hooting "YOLO!" all the way, it's time to re-examine my online presence, and to that end, I want to post here more. DreamWidth is probably never going to capture the "right place right time" phenomenon of LiveJournal, but honestly it's valuable to just write something every day, whether it creates a community or not.

But also? As much as I was joking yesterday, the fiery crash of Twitter might be a blessing in disguise. It was tweeting that had already dealt an unrecoverable blow to everyday blogging before Russia gobbled up LJ, and how many 25-tweet threads should have just been a journal post?

(All of them. The answer is all of them.)

I don't for a second expect people bailing the bird to start posting here in droves; the most patient will move to Mastodon hoping for a Twitter-like. The ones who bounce off of that platform's even-less-pushbutton-than-DW nature will, I'm guessing, end up on Instagram or even (eeeeeew) back on Facebook. But what I'm hoping for is instead a cultural shift. All morning I had a peculiar premonition that the past (mumble) years of Twitter were in some ways an anomaly, a fad with really long legs, the junk food of social media. (And I'm as guilty of chowing down as anybody.)

This is not a prediction–I've been burned enough times by thinking I knew what was ahead to stop thinking that ever about anything. But it is a possibility, and one that I'm excited about.

So one of my projects for this week is to clean up my web presence, and that includes posting thoughts here more often than "once every bazillion years." I don't have the luxury of a desk job any more, so I can't just log in and bang out a post between projects the way I did during the Glory Days of LJ, Mastodon will still be my go-to for quickie posting. But the past three years for me have been largely defined by an inability to focus, and in a lot of ways I just feel like I'm out of practice.

Time to make DreamWidth my practice!

Why DW and not Gneech.com? Honestly, because I want Gneech.com to be a little more formal. I don't want to be posting "Three Good Things" posts or random goofy bits of nonsense there, but here that's totally fair game. That and, crossposting and moderating comments on Gneech.com is a pain. >.> That site, as well as JohnRRobey.com and BringingTheAwesome.com could all use complete reworks, but that's a big project, and right now I only have the bandwidth for incremental improvements.

Also! I'm looking for communities and other ways to connect. If anyone has recommendations, I'd love to hear 'em. :) In the meantime... see you tomorrow. ;)

-TG

Comments

[catwoman69y2k]

Agree with you on so many points. To be honest, Im kind of sitting this next bit of "F**ky wucky sh*t" out. In the past, when I thought it was prudent to exercise your choice in the midst of Bad Behavior By Owner/Admin/Team, and I would be open to telling any of my peers where I was gonna try next.

For us furries, we have gotten a good example of this, of the complacency in the form of sites like FA. They have done no end of poor shit, issues with moderation, making changes that dont reflect community and then gaslighting you for having issue with it. (hell, even I got my whole household IP blocked for someone's power trip over there at FA) But of course, even with some viable alternatives (Weasyl, to use just one example)...it really didnt matter. No one could risk leaving their comfort zone. No one wants to lose their friends or their fans (for those who do artwork and use social media for that reach). So people might try a new network but, nothing is going to stick.

So, for those who are adamant about leaving (because we wish to hold up our principles of not putting our energies into things done by Bad Actors), we are kind of stuck in the middle. I know I never fully killed off my Twitter accts, and just crosspost from there to the network Im trying. I know that you cannot lure people over to anything that doesnt seem lively enough for them. Yes, people are very much on that junk food kick as far as social media goes, so the alternatives have to be easy to use and on that will still let them still post to places like IG and Tiktok, with a way for that post to auto post to Twitter.

[the_gneech]

Social media is such a huge enterprise, so full of hidden pitfalls and problems, that sometimes all you can effectively do is hole up and wait for the storm to blow over, then come out and re-assess based on how the shape of the world has changed. My biggest priority is staying connected to the people I want to be connected with while things are shaking.