We're Here For A Good Time (Not A Long Time)
The title of this post is inspired by the song that just came up in my Tidal queue.
When somebody posted their Mastodon ID on Twitter today, it reminded me that I have an account over there. As I hopped over there to add them, it occurred to me that I have my fingers in a lot of different social media platforms, but I'm really only active on a couple of them.
I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, Livejournal, Dreamwidth, and even Pillowfort.
Having said that, the only ones that I'm actually active on are Facebook and Twitter -- and to a lesser extent Dreamwidth (which I mirror to Livejournal).
I am aware that Facebook and Twitter are utterly wretched platforms, but I'm still on them and active for many of the reasons that Cory Doctorow touched on when they had him on CBC earlier today. That's where all of my friends and family are, and until those platforms fail and implode, there is little likelihood that any of them will follow me to other platforms. When those spaces are your touch points for people whom, quite honestly, you are impressed had the technical prowess to even figure out those simple sites, it makes it hard to move wholesale to a different platform.
What also doesn't help is when the alternate platforms are clunky, awkward to use, and counter-intuitive. Mastodon feels like something developed by Linux geeks who don't get out much, where robustness and up-time trump intuitiveness and usability. I mean, Mastodon isn't terrible, but in some ways it kinda is. Its a fractured platform, with people getting into small, exclusive, invite-only servers that they wear like the blue check-marks in Twitter.
I'll probably migrate there entirely once Twitter implodes (or becomes pay-to-use), but for now I'm only keeping it around as a fall-back.
I want to like Pillowfort, but the only way to access it is through its web page, and the tiny handful of people whom I know on the service aren't active there anyway.
So I find myself being active on the bad sites (Facebook and Twitter) for the same reason that other people are. Like me, some of them have moved to the good sites, and like me, none of them are active on the good sites because nobody else is either.
When somebody posted their Mastodon ID on Twitter today, it reminded me that I have an account over there. As I hopped over there to add them, it occurred to me that I have my fingers in a lot of different social media platforms, but I'm really only active on a couple of them.
I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, Livejournal, Dreamwidth, and even Pillowfort.
Having said that, the only ones that I'm actually active on are Facebook and Twitter -- and to a lesser extent Dreamwidth (which I mirror to Livejournal).
I am aware that Facebook and Twitter are utterly wretched platforms, but I'm still on them and active for many of the reasons that Cory Doctorow touched on when they had him on CBC earlier today. That's where all of my friends and family are, and until those platforms fail and implode, there is little likelihood that any of them will follow me to other platforms. When those spaces are your touch points for people whom, quite honestly, you are impressed had the technical prowess to even figure out those simple sites, it makes it hard to move wholesale to a different platform.
What also doesn't help is when the alternate platforms are clunky, awkward to use, and counter-intuitive. Mastodon feels like something developed by Linux geeks who don't get out much, where robustness and up-time trump intuitiveness and usability. I mean, Mastodon isn't terrible, but in some ways it kinda is. Its a fractured platform, with people getting into small, exclusive, invite-only servers that they wear like the blue check-marks in Twitter.
I'll probably migrate there entirely once Twitter implodes (or becomes pay-to-use), but for now I'm only keeping it around as a fall-back.
I want to like Pillowfort, but the only way to access it is through its web page, and the tiny handful of people whom I know on the service aren't active there anyway.
So I find myself being active on the bad sites (Facebook and Twitter) for the same reason that other people are. Like me, some of them have moved to the good sites, and like me, none of them are active on the good sites because nobody else is either.