social media

A wordless summary of our current civilization

Presented by Chris Silverman.

Description: “A dull gray background. Hurtling from the sky is a huge asteroid, white heat glowing around it and streaming from behind. Directly in its path, seconds from impact, is a person holding up a phone, taking one last photo.”

Check out Chris’s excellent work on your favourite (?) social media platform or at notes.art

I write at the intersection of tragedy and farce

Not really. But it seems popular these days to be writing at or about the intersection of some thing and some other thing or things, and as I get older, I descend more into, “How do you do, fellow kids?” territory, wanting desperately to seem hip, cool, and relevant while being only a little of each.

Things I also write at the intersection of:

  • The street I live on and the one nearest it
  • Apple and why it’s so much fun taking shots at the company
  • Apples and pears, the eternal battle for snack fruit dominance
  • Technology and penguins
  • This and that

Have a favourite intersection you want me to write at? Let me know!

A quick follow-up to thoughts on social media

Specifically on why it may be me, and not social media, though to be fair, Facebook is still a raging dumpster fire.

Facebook:

Anyway, as I opined to Nic today while talking about it, I think it really comes down to social media now just being a form of entertainment (and more nominally, for news and information) and I prefer to get my entertainment through other means, so a little social media goes a long way.

Or maybe I just suck at finding good people and things to follow.

Either way, cutting back on it will give me more time to draw. I’m going to draw something right now, then post it, right here! In the next post.

Another thought on social media and how I use it

As I’ve mentioned before, the only social media I really use anymore is Mastodon, but even there I’ve retreated mainly into the role of lurker, occasionally liking or boosting posts, and sometimes replying. I rarely create a post, and it’s mainly because I don’t really know anyone on Mastodon. On Facebook or Instagram, there are people I know–family or friends. I originally used FB like many people, to keep in touch with these people.

Toot be or not toot be

Facebook is a massive dumpster fire now, so while there are still lots of people there who I know IRL1I dislike the term “In Real Life” but can’t come up with anything better., I don’t care to keep in touch with them because I tend to keep my distance from dumpster fires.

Instagram was mainly where I posted bird photos, but I’ve pretty much stopped doing that and IG is a dumpster fire, too, it’s just a slightly smaller bin.

But as I pick and choose who or what to follow on Mastodon, I find myself asking more and more, what is it I’m looking for? Have I turned into a U2 song? Have I still not found it? Am I looking for something I will never find?

I think it’s possible, and the broader implication is that maybe social media is just not for me. Maybe it never was, and it only became obvious once I’d retreated from most, but not all, of it.

On Mastodon, I follow a few people ‘n things:

  • The hashtag #sketch
  • A few tech people (skewing to Apple, just because there’s so many of them)
  • The hashtag #linuxmint
  • A few political people or people who post about technology/politics
  • A few others I’ve discovered along the way, due to their photography, or just their writing on assorted topics

Generally, this gives me a decent mix of stuff that doesn’t get too bogged down in any one area. #sketch is lightly used, so there’s never too many posts to go through. Half of the ones for #linuxmint (and ther aren’t many) are in languages other than English, so I could probably drop that tag (I tried following #linux for a time, but it gets too much traffic, as one might expect on a nerd-centric platform like Mastodon). The others are a mixed bag.

Mastodon itself is fine. Some people are Very Serious or get easily offended. Some seem to easily offend others. It’s probably picked up some of the worst parts of Twitter, but has fewer tools for people to manage who can interact with them and their posts. Improvements are allegedly coming, but it’s been almost two years since the exodus from Twitter and now Bluesky, which is effectively a Twitter clone, but more “fun” is picking up users while Mastodon treads water. There seems to be a level of crankiness on Mastodon that I’m noticing more, probably related to the above-mentioned lack of tools, or related issues.

I don’t care about which site is more popular. Mastodon is big enough for me, but more often now, I find myself just scrolling through and feeling unsatisfied. There are jokes and cogent observations and talk about the Fediverse, and it’s all fine, but…unnecessary? I think the only thing I’d really miss are Chris Silverman’s bizarre and utterly fantastic Apple Notes sketches, and I can always check the notes.art site for those.

Then I think about the last time I lost myself in a sketch. It’s been a while. And I wonder if I’m just passing time scrolling and scrolling, and getting very little out of it. So maybe it’s not even Mastodon, it’s just me falling into a lazy habit and unwilling (so far) to escape out of it.

More on this later as I continue pondering.

Ed Zitron is zesty and as the kids say, I am here for it

Ed Zitron has a free newsletter called Ed Zitron’s Where’s Your Ed At, in which he goes into great detail about how terrible tech companies are. Or at least that’s what he’s been riffing on lately. And he doesn’t mince words when describing the villains of these pieces. The current newsletter as I write this is titled Sam Altman is Full of Shit.

Some might think he’s being overly dramatic with the way he describes the various players and manipulators, but in the current political space, it feels right to me–we need to push hard on this stuff, so the average person stirs out of their social media-induced slumber and realizes what is happening and maybe (maybe) begins to care a little about it. And then change can (or should) happen.

Here’s the full description from Ed’s About page in case you are curious about whom this guy is and why you might want to read what he has to say.

Who Are You, Exactly? And What Is This Newsletter?

My name’s Ed, I’m the CEO of national Media Relations and Public Relations company EZPR, of which I am both the E (Ed) and the Z (Zitron).

I host the Better Offline Podcast, coming to iHeartRadio and everywhere else you find your podcasts February 2024. (Editor’s note: Ed should probably update this, as it’s May 2024 as I type these words.)

I write about stuff that interests me – issues in society, primarily those surrounding tech, but occasionally move into other areas and more personal pieces depending on my mood. I try and write once a week.

I was previously a games journalist, writing for PC Zone, CVG, Eurogamer and others. I’ve been published in the Wall Street Journal, USAToday, TechCrunch, and named one of the top 50 PR people in tech four times. I’ve written two books, and you are welcome to learn more here.

I live and work out of Las Vegas, Nevada.

From the About page of Where’s Your Ed At

Check it out, but be prepared to rein in your OCD–his pieces run long, but those 20 minutes feel like they fly by for me.

LinkedIn’s malicious notifications

LinkedIn decided to send me an unsolicited email recently. I immediately unsubscribed, because I have negative interest in receiving anything at all from LinkedIn.

Today I got another email. I followed the Unsubscribe link and logged into my LinkedIn account. There is a section called Notifications. Convenient!

It has a lot of categories:

That’s 11 categories–and several have sub-categories, each with their own notifications. You can disable all of them, if you like (I like this very much). What you can’t do, however, is just turn off ALL notifications at once–the option doesn’t exist.

This is LinkedIn, and by proxy, Microsoft, showing contempt for its users. Turning off all the notifications requires 24 clicks. 24! Absurd. This should be illegal. It probably is in Europe.

I’m now pondering whether to just delete my LinkedIn profile entirely, make it part of The Culling. LinkedIn is bad and should feel bad.

A few tips for a better Mastodon experience

I do most of my social networking on Mastodon these days and I’ve talked a bit before about why I like it. Here are a few tips on making it a better experience and a recap on why I like it.

Why I like Mastodon

  • It’s smaller. Sometimes smaller is better. I can comfortably work through my feed and leave Mastodon for a while and not feel that weird and unhealthy FOMO. It’s easy to dip in and out of, not a central part of my life.
  • The decentralized nature of it means it’s not subject to the whims of a giant corporation or a giant corporation headed by a narcissistic racist piece of work, or, as is sometimes the case, both! It is subject to the whims of the server you choose, but (with a certain degree of bumpiness) you can move to another server if things get really bad.
  • Due to its non-corporate nature, it has no ads. It runs off of donations, like it’s the web from 2003 or something. No ads is a benefit I cannot overstate enough.
  • There is no algorithm. For some people who just want an endless slurry of things to look at, this is a downside. To me, it means you can choose exactly what type of content you want to see, which is far more preferable.

Tips for a better Mastodon experience

  • The official phone app and web client are fine, and you have to use them to adjust certain settings, but there are a lot of third party clients that make the experience better:
    • The Mac has a ton of options covering paid, subscription-based and free. Some popular choices include Mona, Ivory and Ice Cubes (all can be found on the App Store). There are many others.
    • Windows has fewer to choose from. A decent one is Whalebird.
    • Any OS (including Linux and phone browsers) can use one of several fine web clients. Two popular ones are Elk, which has a Twitter-like look and feel, and Phanpy, which goes for a minimalist look and has some interesting twists, like boost carousels.
  • Use filters! You’ll need to set these up in the official client. Go to Preferences and Filters. You can use this to filter out content you’re not interested in. For example, if you don’t want to see something associated with a particular tag, just add the tag here. If you hate all manner of dogs, add dogs and anything tagged #dogs will not be shown in your feed. You can also specify how granular you want the tag to be filtered out (you can still allow it in conversations, for example).
  • Use hashtags! This one is simple–follow hashtags that appeal to you. I follow #sketch, as an example.
  • Use hashtags (yes, again)! If you post, use an appropriate hashtag, so others can find your post if they’re interested in the topic.
  • Avoid or reduce exposure to politics. Political debates exist on Mastodon, and you’ll generally not come out of them feeling better. Why do that to yourself? On the other hand, if this is what you groove on, go nuts! #uspolitics exists for you.
  • It may be obvious, but follow people you know (or whose posts you enjoy).
  • Boost stuff you like! Boosts will show up in the feed of anyone following you. It’s an easy way to share. Just don’t, you know, boost literally everything you see.
  • If you don’t want to choose a server, go with the default mastodon.social. It’s big and well-managed.
  • Be nice! Don’t deny people their experience or be an over-explaining jerk.
  • Approach Trending/Explore/For You (depending on the client you use) with caution. You might find stuff you like, you might not. It’s probably better to spend a little time tweaking your feed using hashtags and following people you know.
  • Remember to go outside, hug kittens and do other offline stuff. Mastodon, like any social media, should not be the thing your life revolves around.

omg lol

Yes, I did it. Did what? If I listed everything, we’d be here a while, and while I love lists, I don’t know if I love them that much.

What I did four days ago, though, was secure the following:

https://stanjames.omg.lol/

If you click that link, you’ll see this:

Why did I do this? Now I can do a list!

  • It was cheap (they were having a sale that turned out to be 42% off).
  • It intersects nearly perfectly between tech/geek and silly for me.
  • My name was available (Creole Ned is not, you may be shocked to learn, my real name).
  • It’s like having a little box of nerd toys to play with.

It has to be renewed every year, so I’ve got 11 months, 3 weeks and 6 days as of this post to decide if I want to keep it or not. In the interim, it’s play time. I’ll have more on this in the next week.

(Also, the status you should see in the right sidebar is courtesy of omg.lol)

I can wait

I find this kind of message depressing (it’s from Mastodon, the site mentioned is focused on Mac and Apple stuff):

The implied message, of course, “If you PAID me money, you could be watching this video from the future RIGHT NOW.” Instead of waiting a single day.

I don’t begrudge anyone asking for money for videos or writing they produce–if they think their work has value, go ahead and charge for it. But releasing the paid members version a day early is nothing more than a tribute to the vanishing attention spans prevalent in a social media-addled society where everything must be NOW and also, QUICK CUTS and SHORT and MORE, MORE!

I can wait a day. Find a better pitch.

And now, Maru getting into a small box:

Substack makes the latest chapter of The Culling easy!

NOTE: This post is updated semi-regularly with any relevant news on the mentioned newsletters.

Substack has been in the tech/media news lately, for all the wrong reasons. Their position on moderation can be roughly summed up as:

  • Sex is bad
  • Incitement to violence is bad
  • Everything else, including actual Nazis, is OK!

After re-affirming that they would not actively moderate content on their platform, and only offering to remove a few newsletters specifically brought to their attention, a number of prominent newsletters opted to leave Substack, with most moving to Ghost, which, unlike Substack, is not a platform, just a company that provides a blog/platform service and that’s about it. Others went to Buttondown1My own piddly newsletter, recently renamed Doodlings and Noodlings, is debuting on Buttondown this very month, Beehiiv, other hosts or moved to self-hosting.

My stance on this situation is:

  • Substack is free to choose whom they host on their platform
  • I, likewise, can choose to not have any paid subscriptions on Substack, since my payments are helping to fund a lot of hate. See here for details: All the garbage I found on Substack in 1 hour
  • I also can choose to move my own newsletter elsewhere, which I have done

I’ve gone a step further now, by unsubscribing to all free Substack newsletters. In every case, I have written a polite message to the newsletter author letting them know why I have unsubbed. I’m hoping some of them will switch to other hosts, but at this point I think the ones who haven’t are probably leaning more toward not moving. And that’s their choice–as is mine to unsub!

I’ll update this post with any word back I may hear from these newsletters. The two I most recently unsubbed to are:

  • Austin Kleon (paid)
  • Experimental History (free)

UPDATE, January 29, 2024: Apparently I subscribed to a lot of Substack newsletters! 😛 Here’s more I’ve unsubscribed from:

  • Design Lobster (free–no pay option exists)
  • Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends (free–no pay option exists). UPDATE, January 29, 2024: The author wrote me back to say she has been in touch with Substack execs and is looking into moving to a different platform. Good to hear!
  • The Status Kuo (free, paid option exists)
  • GameDiscoverCo (free, paid option exists). I didn’t email to explain why I was unsubscribing, probably because I doubt they will move.
  • I’m Fine I’m Fine Just Understand (free, paid option exists). This one is weird, because it’s a comic about a person transitioning and Substack famously already had an exile a few years back for hosting openly transphobic writers. I also didn’t explain why I’m unsubscribing here.

I have perfected the non-post

This, of course, doesn’t look anything like me, and the hands are the usual nightmare stuff that screams “AI-generated”, but I still kind of like the composition.

These days I am restricting most of my social media stuff to Mastodon, and lately I’ve started doing non-posts. They go like this:

  1. See an interesting post from someone I follow, or someone whose post has been boosted by someone I follow.
  2. Start writing a reply to the post.
  3. Question whether the reply adds anything of value.
  4. Exit out of the reply, opting not to post it.
  5. Repeat Steps 1-4.

Why do I do this? I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’s related to this latent fear of saying the wrong thing, somehow, of offending or coming across as weird or odd. I am a fairly shy person in face-to-face interactions, and I think this might be the online equivalent to that. I just prefer to watch others talk. Or type, in this case.

Proving this, I was originally going to make this a post on Mastodon, then changed my mind and posted it here instead.

One last look at social media for 2023

Here’s my year-end summary of me and social media, by platform:

Mastodon: Pretty much the only one I use right now. I recently saw it described as the platform for nerds, and I think that’s accurate. After some initial interest when Twitter started falling apart under Musk, it seems to have peaked, but it’s still an important, useful and entertaining place. It takes more work and people don’t like that with their social media. I don’t mind, because:

  • No ads
  • No algorithm
  • A ton of third party clients for every platform, including alternate web clients. My current favourite is Phanpy, which is a terrible name, but a very handsome minimalist web client: Home / Phanpy

Facebook: Hot garbage. Also, cold garbage and medium-warm garbage. A hellscape of ads and “Suggested for you” with a few posts from people you’re following dotted in-between. I have no idea why anyone would use Facebook anymore, except for very specific purposes (you’re a member of a group, your family or friends refuse to move to something else because they are terrible people, etc.)

Instagram: The web version is still bare-bones and ugly. It will be this way for as long as it exists. It’s basically Facebook Lite at this point, but with more images and videos. Lots of videos. Do you like videos? Because it has videos. Also, plenty of ads. The ads are also videos. That said, it’s still noticeably better than Facebook, though I rarely visit these days.

Threads: It’s OK. For now, there are no ads, but that will change eventually, and it will join other Meta sites in being an ad-clogged hell. Very bare-bones and minimalist, but not the good kind of minimalist, just ugly and unappealing. If they follow through with federation, it may be possible to follow people and interact through one of the excellent Mastodon clients, so there is that. I check in every month or so, never post.

Bluesky: Their eventual business model (basically premium services over ads) is admirable in a way, but I am skeptical it can work. Also, the fact that it is still invite-only gives me pause. If they still can’t scale up now, after this long, when will they? It feels a bit like a doomed private club. The people there will have a grand time, until it abruptly shutters. I have an account, but have never posted. The web interface is also spartan and unattractive.

There are other social media platforms out there, but I either don’t have accounts or don’t use them in any meaningful way. And then there’s X (formerly Twitter) and all I will say about that is:

  • I deleted my account.
  • I give it a few more years of dumpster fire management before it finally shuts down.
  • I see a faint glimmer that the Twitter name could end up in the hands of someone who might do something good with it. But it is an extremely faint glimmer.

Overall, I get most of what I need from Mastodon, as it best fits what I want, which is not to have my posts showered with likes and adoration, because I seldom post and don’t care for or need the affirmation–while not denying likes and affirmation are still nice! I am interested in the trajectory of Threads as it relatives to the Fediverse. Everything else is pretty much meh to bleah.

We’ll see how things shake out in 2024, which will be all sorts of fun on social media with the U.S. presidential election at the end of the year.