Musing II
Its Again, Some Internet Person
We have found ourselves in the same time(no matter the time) and place(IP address). "Who am I?" you may ask but this is not important. If so then you would have tried to go to my About Page or tried to dredge up my Mastodon Account 🐘 to get a clue. So we all know that isn't really what you were asking now is it?
How will we choose to communicate with each other and what manner? As someone that struggled and still struggles with people disliking to interact with me I'm probably not the best person to work on this. Not sure if it's my ADHD or other undiagnosed issue but it hurts. I try to reach out and modulate & take other actions but it's not always the best. A big thing is to not just take it so personally. Society seems to be struggling with the aspect and its very visible because its causing issues with our largest institutions.
Recently personally it has been a challenge that I jumped into on Mastodon and got different kind of answers (or no response at all) quite a bit even if it wasn't intentional focus on the convo. I hope that our desires to communicate remains. We've seen the book 'Bowling Alone" just become more and more of reality. Though to be honest there is something at my job at a community college we are seeing reversal of younger adults who more than ever are starting to desire more in person classes & in person events. This is much different than when I was that young, we had no digital or other options. It was our desire to have options. To which, I DO BELIEVE we need all the options for various reasons like work, health, and age. Education is something we should endeavor to champion for all.
I enjoy posting and interacting on Mastodon and greater fediverse(hoping to do some peertube) which gets complaints about not easily being monetized or far reaching. That is unfortunate and hope that we grow to reward everyone in this kind of protocol. It is something that allows us to enjoy services in a manner we enjoyed in the past with early social media, it also allows community moderation & nurturing of topics & community. Something that is possible in other places but is often centralized & focused around IPOing or involving it as a notch under some billionaire's acquisition to monetize or hope to monetize in the future. So I like this pace where we deal with constraints and deal with the system as it is. The protocol is open and used openly, there isn't some tweaking to make it something addictive or promote hostile interactions.
It may not be everyone's cup of tea but it works for my personal pace. I can see the point of those that are releasing very popular or just very engaging work then to drop down to this pace, it can be a struggle for sure. I've tried to use the other fedi items that seems promising. Like we can engage like old Twitter, Reddit, Goodreads, and YouTube. That clicks for me but it all struggles the same issue as Mastodon.
One advantage for better or worse is the enshittification of the whole established order. I suppose that is what is causing the issue. The protocols we currently use are based on an era that USERS enjoyed and caters to that era too. This new wave of exodus has been from people who Promote, Advertise, and even make a Living on Social Platforms as these billionaire owners have stopped pitting them against each other and want to replace them entirely. So they arrive here and it looks similar but the mantra & ethos is unknown to them. They want a creator favoring platform especially ones that drive engagement. It for sure can be a challenge and I hope it doesn't create cyncial feelings. Hopefully we can foster ways to create & support people but not at the community's expense. We are in new waters together. It works when we all work together. The growth can help but it can also change things that could impact current users.
I'm not sure what the balance is. I've seen the debate over the years but I'm still unsure either. I like supporting the server and mastodon creators with sadly small dollar amounts but I do favor that aspect. Just like I would enjoy doing with journalism. I give to an Oklahoma outfit Non-doc because they make content I like. In the past I did pateron but lately my money is tight so I don't do so much. I turn on audiobook subscriptions like libro.fm because I subscribed to Audible for over ten years then got fed up with no easy ownership manner. I was able to export it all out and add it to my own self-hosted service, Audiobookshelf. So these things matter to me just as much as I want journalism & public institutions to be free from corporate & corrupt capture.
Hopefully, its not all lost. As in my midweek update, I'm quite occupied with getting our county Democrat party back going or some kind of political group at least. Also, that it can start to be invested in outcomes and be players in the room especially in local politics. Its interesting to me how to everything intersects and we all have similar struggles but its difficult to put the puzzle pieces together. Hopefully for those trying to harm and fragement society that this process is way way more difficult if not impossible.
Hopefully we find get to a point where we all like things in society and on the web a lot better. That there is respect and appreciation for the human effort that we don't seek to digitize or automate away the human connections and elments just the things it can help with & that respects humanity and life. Too often our humanity leads us to invent and deploy things like dangerous bombs and other ills. Yet, after hard lessons or with cooler heads we have gotten past these challenges. With the dangers of Nuclear weapons and erractic leaders who weld them, we've avoided a lot of harm so far but it hasn't been easy.
It might not be as scary as that but it is important that we put something better into this world than machines that disrepect and creates a loathing of our fellow man.