Why use post when this sofa is here just going to dip my paw in your coffee and do a taste test – oh never mind i forgot i don’t like coffee – you can have that back now and make it to the carpet before i vomit mmmmmm for pushed the mug off the table or hide at bottom of staircase to trip human. Waffles i cry and cry and cry unless you pet me, and then maybe i cry just for fun so weigh eight…
Cast your kind back a couple of decades. The internet is a thing, "social media" hasn't really evolved yet, and those online spend much of their online "socialising" time is spent on forums, IRC, early instant messaging platforms. If we had something to say, or share, we wrote a blog. Broadly we were happy. Flame wars still happened but were contained and easily avoided if you wanted nothing to do with them.
Then everything changed.
Somehow we all got swept up in the endless pull of the "attention economy", feverishly posting and sharing then being drawn in to arguments as each social media platform figured the most effective way to keep you looking at them was to keep you "engaged". Problem is that getting people angry is a really effective way to keep people engaged. So the platforms push more and more of what kept us angry, and make bank mining as much information about each of us as possible.
There is a better way.
We can take a step back. We can return to The Old Ways, but with current technologies it's easier than ever.
These are a few of my thoughts on how we can do this better while keeping in touch:
Start a blog! Tumblr is super easy to use, & has a lot of features you'd expect having been on social networks like commenting, mobile app, nice formatting of posts if you throw in pictures etc.. You can follow others directly on Tumblr or use an RSS feed (more on that shortly). You can also have multiple blogs on Tumblr for personal posts, pets, a hobby if you like and each can have it's own privacy settings.
If you want a little more control (albeit with a little less finesse in making new posts) you can try a WordPress blog. You can pay for hosting and get full control (and some enhanced features), or take a free blog at WordPress.com . Like Tumblr you can follow others on Wordpress if you are also on there or can get people's updates via RSS or email.
Email! Yes email is still a thing, and I guarantee everyone you know who has any online activity has an address. Don't want to write a blog but still want to let friends and family know what you're up to? Write an email newsletter (as often as you like) & send it out to them (just remember to use the BCC field when sending so you don't give everyone's email addresses to each other without their consent).
Group chats. Many of us have WhatsApp, Telegram, maybe iMessage (urgh) of Facebook messenger. These all have group chat features where you can gather groups of friends and or family to chat.
Try a different social media platform. There are open source alternatives like Mastodon that offer the full social media experience without the data harvesting & suspicious algorithms. But to be honest though they're somewhat flakey, involve a learning curve & probably don't have anyone you already know on them. It's difficult to get people to try a whole new social network (which is weird given they tried Facebook once and seemed to stay..) so unless you're interested in the topics of a niche server these probably aren't offering much to most just now.
An old-school forum. You know the drill, create a log on, start posting new topics and get a conversation going. This sort of has the same challenge as alternative social networks. Difficult to get people to come along and engage. I tried it a few months ago, opening a fresh new forum, but it fizzled out pretty fast.
I'm really leaning towards options 1 and 2. I can post without needing to convince others to come along. I can share what I've posted to other existing social networks if I chose, and no one needs an account to follow or see me.
RSS is a great solution to following what friends are posting wether that's on a tumblr blog, a Wordpress one, or another one somewhere else entirely. RSS is a standard (that Twitter and Facebook both dropped, to their shame) that allows you to “subscribe” to any blog or website that offers an RSS feed. You can load that all onto an app and either scroll a timeline feed of posts or read by each website. All under your control, no adverts added, no algorithms pushing an attention-seeking agenda, no Russian (or any other) trolls sewing division. Just the content you want to see.
It doesn’t need to just be friends’ blogs either. Almost every news service, or technology or gaming or cars or any other blog, offers an RSS feed you can add into the mix. You can curate your own controlled collection of what you want to see and avoid all the toxicity.
Ok perhaps “forest” is a little over-egging it but I needed some air on account of being a touch peaks (following on from yesterdays bout of nausea, isn’t human biology fun!) and was marvelling at the dandelions being let to grow free from the onslaught of council “landscapers”. Then I looked a little closer and what I thought might have been a wildflower space turned out to be scattered with saplings!
I looked further and noticed a sign talking about a woodland creation scheme from Leeds City Council, planting near 6 million trees (albeit over 25 years). Pleased to see this happening in these spaces. The trees will, in time, be a useful carbon capture of course but there’s going to be great benefits for insects (important pollinators) with these spaces being allowed a run free from arbitrary mowing.
Dandelions are amazing. They pop up pretty much anywhere, are tremendously notorious for humans, and provide badly needed sustenance for bees.
Don’t dig them up, or cut them down. Let them thrive, if you feel up for it make a delicious coffee style drink from their roasted roots and attract all sorts of pollinators!
I’ve got this mostly set to private in order to feel more able to share the goings on of life without worrying so much about it being decoured by the Zuckerberg machine.
So log in to Tumblr / create an account and let’s hang out and catch up here 😊
snowghoul
baratheonpilled
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
titsay