Where I'm at on social media (literally and philosophically)

I now have a Bluesky account (@ImpudentStrumpet.bsky.social) and a Mastodon account (@ImpudentStrumpet@mastodon.social), and I continue to be on Twitter (@ImpStrump).

I've tried to move my follows over, but if I missed you it wasn't intentional.

 

I haven't made any decisions about which I'm going to use or how or how much. My communities seem to be leaning towards Bluesky, but its interface doesn't play nicely with my post-head-injury eyes and brain. I have discovered various web clients (turns out you can just search github for things you're wishing someone would code!) but nothing is consistently comfortable.

 

(I use a combination of GoodTwitter2 and Minimal Theme for Twitter to make Twitter comfortable. It looks like this. I'd welcome any tips on how to achieve this with Bluesky or Mastodon.)

***

I have been finding Twitter less useful lately. Either there are fewer tweets or I'm seeing fewer tweets. Quite frequently I pop in, idly scroll, and quickly reach the point where I last left off. (That hasn't happened for years!)

Previously, if I heard a weird noise or something outside, I'd search for "Yonge and Eglinton" (my neighbourhood) in Twitter and get other people tweeting about whatever weird noise I'd just heard. (e.g. they'd be saying something like "Why's there a helicopter circling Yonge and Eglinton?" and then I'd know it's a helicopter). Now, I just get real estate listings.

 

I'm finding more pornbots in my mentions and fewer actual people. I'm finding TV livetweeting hashtags less active. Basically, it's just not meeting my needs as well.

 

If my needs were just entertainment, I wouldn't be worrying about this. However, after nearly 15 years of curation, I've gotten to a point where my Twitter feed effortlessly provides me with new information that I didn't even know I needed and would never have thought to proactively seek out. 

From what it means when someone asks "What are your pronouns?" to the fact that COVID is airborne and can be mitigated with robust HEPA filtration, important things I didn't even know that I didn't even know reached me as I was idly scrolling for weather updates and puppy pictures, and I'm a more informed person better able to function in society because of it.

I fear that my social media might be doing that less well now, and I might not even notice.

(I'm also noticing something similar with Reddit - of stuff that's reaching me organically, the ratio of people who are less informed that me to people who have something to teach me is worsening.)

***

And the scary thing is how easy it would be for me to live in ignorance. I'm older. I'm established. I'm comfortable. I have leeway and credibility and social capital. I'm intrinsically pessimistic and secure in my flaws.

If someone asked me "What are your pronouns?" and I didn't know what they meant, I'd be flummoxed and baffled. Someone would explain what they meant, I'd tell them "she/her" and apologize with grace for not knowing what they meant on the grounds that I'm a milquetoast middle-aged lady. I wouldn't suffer any long-term consequences, and might even get credit for handling it with grace rather than harrumphing over it. 

And I wouldn't even realize I'd missed something - I'd just think this is yet another thing that didn't reach me until it reached me.

 

If I didn't know that the COVID protections currently being required by public health were insufficient and ended up contracting COVID as a result, I would shrug my shoulders and figure "Well, bad things happen. People get sick. Why shouldn't it happen to me?" Even if I developed Long COVID, my head injury has already taught me that life-altering medical consequences can happen for reasons completely outside your control. 

 

I'd be miserable, my life would be worse every day, and I wouldn't even realize I'd missed something - I'd think this is yet another bad thing that happens to people.

I'm sure there are already tons of things I'm missing, but I fear that the enshittification of Twitter is exacerbating it compared with if Twitter had continued to be run with the same competence as before the takeover.

***

I've also been thinking Tumblr a lot. 

Tumblr was bought out for a ridiculously high price in 2013 by disruptive management that made a lot of unpopular changes. It bled users, and was sold in 2019 at a massive loss. 

Conventional wisdom is that Tumblr is dead, but the fact of the matter is the community is still there.

I'm not on Tumblr (the interface and format never really met my needs), but I follow some people's Tumblrs in my feed reader, and a lot of Good Omens fandom happens there so I do keep an eye on it.

And the community is still there, still thriving, still being weird with their blorbos and their Goncharovs. They outlasted the occupiers and drove them off.

Maybe we can do the same thing with Twitter?

***

I've quipped that I don't call Twitter "X" for the same reason that I don't call Gdańsk "Danzig".

 

Gdańsk has, obviously, been through some shit over the centuries. Irrevocable harm was done, many did not emerge unscathed (to put it mildly).

And yet, today, it is unquestionably called Gdańsk. Not Danzig.

 

I haven't given up hope that we can do the same with Twitter.

But I've also hedged my bets and secured my pied-à-terre elsewhere.