The events of the last year and the role social media has played in them are causing some to think about where they post their thoughts. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with social media over the years so I’m happy to see a renewed interest in blogging. Matt Mullenweg has gone so far as to say 2018 is the year of blogging.

A few of people I follow have started posting more on their own sites recently. Of note, a former co-worker, Brendan, talks about Steering Clear of the Dumpster Fire that is Twitter. Also, Dave Rupert has started his very own RSS Club, although I’m violating the rules of RSS Club by posting the link here.

Three cheers for blogging & RSS in 2018!!!

3 thoughts on “Anti-Social Media

  1. The more I think of it the more I feel the “dumpster fire” analogy is an appropriate one for Twitter and Facebook. It’s not just the toxicity and the infernal fusing together of formerly discrete objects into a single, charred, repulsive blob; it’s also the sense I get that the things we put there — all the thoughts, memories, photos, fragments of our lives — are just going to evaporate.

    Just imagine asking a normal person to locate, say, the first Facebook post they wrote after the 2012 presidential election. I doubt they’d be able to find it. It kind of saddens me to think of how much information we’ve surrendered to these platforms. At least with one’s own site there’s a feeling that you know where things are, that your memories aren’t buried under those of millions of others.

    • I was having a conversation about this the other day and said that the existence of Twitter most certainly does not make the world a better place. Part of me thinks they should just end the experiment now. However, without Twitter, I fear that our president might start using the the Emergency Alert System to communicate. I’m actually surprised he hasn’t exercised that executive privilege yet. Perhaps he doesn’t know about it.

      As for Facebook, it could be so much better than it is. They’ve build a reaction machine that spews “content” for everyone to look at–along with a healthy number of advertisements. I fear that many people look no further than Facebook for their information now, and only the headlines at that.

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