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Here and hedging my bets
Jan. 11th, 2025 12:55 pmHello world,
It seems the world of social media is on the move as various platforms switch sides from supporting some pretence at managing the endless streams of democracy destroying bullshit to outright supporting bigotry and the destruction of objective truth. Naturally the community of people I hang out with are shipping off of facebook as quickly as their legs/wheels/etc can carry them.So here I am staking out my spot on a few likely alternatives and wondering who I got here. I figure I may as well write down how I got here as some kind of attempt at a first post.
I joined the internet back in the mid 90's. It was quite rare for somebody not at Uni to be on the internet back then but we had a dial with a company called Demon and a phone company who did free weekend and evening calls to anybody who was also with them and Demon were with them so I had free evening and weekend internet and back in the 90's this was far from normal. Most people paid for internet access by the minuet and given how long it took to download anything that cost a lot so I was very lucky. In terms of social media I was on Usernet news groups and a couple of furry mailing lists and for general chatting with people I was also on Snow Plains and Surfers. Snow plains and surfers were kind of a cross between a collection of chatrooms and a text based multi-user rpg. Also there was IRC. Myspace was about but I had raw coded my own website so didn't bother with that.
At some point Livejournal came along and along with all my friends I ended up there. For those of you who don't remember LJ It was basically the dreamwitch of it's day except that it was one of the biggest social media sites of it's day.
Some people started getting fed up with LJ at some point and moving away from it and frankly I forget why. The place many of them moved to was normally here on Dreamwidth to begin with and there were a few others and they were all more or less the same sort of thing, LJ continued and it was about that point I realised I didn't want to be checking multiple websites every day so I stayed there and didn't jump to any others.
Then came Facebook. Everybody seemed to have gone there so to keep up with my friends I had to go there too. Not long after that LJ got bought out by the Russians so we all left.
I never bothered with Twitter because there was no good reason to have yet more stuff to do and as for tic-tok I don't want to generate tax revenue for a chines government that are going to use it for things like genociding various racial groups in their country. Lots of other social media things came and went and I didn't bother with them as facebook basically did what I needed.
Then came the last few months. I've joined Whatsapp for the sake of a couple of community organisations I am involved in. Then facebook made it's self uncomfortable for not only myself, but a load of my friends. So I've set up an account on Bluesky, which is fine but how do people live with such tiny post length limits. Then I found out Dream Width is still going and a load of friends are decamping here. As a Social media not a million miles in style from LJ which I have to admit a certain degree of nostalgia for it seems like the sensible place to come.
So Hello world, I'm here now. I suspect I will also be following things and posting on BS, but this may well be the place for me.
And if that's not put you off following me nothing will.
It seems the world of social media is on the move as various platforms switch sides from supporting some pretence at managing the endless streams of democracy destroying bullshit to outright supporting bigotry and the destruction of objective truth. Naturally the community of people I hang out with are shipping off of facebook as quickly as their legs/wheels/etc can carry them.So here I am staking out my spot on a few likely alternatives and wondering who I got here. I figure I may as well write down how I got here as some kind of attempt at a first post.
I joined the internet back in the mid 90's. It was quite rare for somebody not at Uni to be on the internet back then but we had a dial with a company called Demon and a phone company who did free weekend and evening calls to anybody who was also with them and Demon were with them so I had free evening and weekend internet and back in the 90's this was far from normal. Most people paid for internet access by the minuet and given how long it took to download anything that cost a lot so I was very lucky. In terms of social media I was on Usernet news groups and a couple of furry mailing lists and for general chatting with people I was also on Snow Plains and Surfers. Snow plains and surfers were kind of a cross between a collection of chatrooms and a text based multi-user rpg. Also there was IRC. Myspace was about but I had raw coded my own website so didn't bother with that.
At some point Livejournal came along and along with all my friends I ended up there. For those of you who don't remember LJ It was basically the dreamwitch of it's day except that it was one of the biggest social media sites of it's day.
Some people started getting fed up with LJ at some point and moving away from it and frankly I forget why. The place many of them moved to was normally here on Dreamwidth to begin with and there were a few others and they were all more or less the same sort of thing, LJ continued and it was about that point I realised I didn't want to be checking multiple websites every day so I stayed there and didn't jump to any others.
Then came Facebook. Everybody seemed to have gone there so to keep up with my friends I had to go there too. Not long after that LJ got bought out by the Russians so we all left.
I never bothered with Twitter because there was no good reason to have yet more stuff to do and as for tic-tok I don't want to generate tax revenue for a chines government that are going to use it for things like genociding various racial groups in their country. Lots of other social media things came and went and I didn't bother with them as facebook basically did what I needed.
Then came the last few months. I've joined Whatsapp for the sake of a couple of community organisations I am involved in. Then facebook made it's self uncomfortable for not only myself, but a load of my friends. So I've set up an account on Bluesky, which is fine but how do people live with such tiny post length limits. Then I found out Dream Width is still going and a load of friends are decamping here. As a Social media not a million miles in style from LJ which I have to admit a certain degree of nostalgia for it seems like the sensible place to come.
So Hello world, I'm here now. I suspect I will also be following things and posting on BS, but this may well be the place for me.
And if that's not put you off following me nothing will.
