Content creators on social media, especially for videos, tend to be known for one thing.
One kind of comedy sketch. One specific art style. Traveling around the world. Trying new recipes. Productivity hacks. Technology reviews.
They are known for that one topic.
That’s limiting, which can be a good thing (consistency) or a bad thing (burnout).
Before social media, you didn’t have to be one thing on the internet. You could just be yourself.
Personal blogs were (and still are) places where you could post about whatever you wanted. You didn’t have to pick a niche.
Even message boards didn’t pin you to one topic. Yes, there was usually one focus area (a TV show, a book series), but there were also areas to chat off topic about whatever you wanted.
Mainstream social media is dying, and a lot of it has to do with being funneled into one thing—the corporate-controlled algorithm.
The algorithm forces ads and specific kinds of content on to your feed. It leaves less room to interact with people you follow and discover new people with common interests.
This makes social media feel restrictive. You get one way to see content, instead of many.
If people want a different way to interact online, personal websites are an alternative. Website platforms have gotten easier to use compared to pre-social media times.
I’m excited about what that means for people who want to find community online, but not on social media anymore.
Gladden offers “paper apps.” As in, analog games in a pocket notebook format.
Search has bent in quality towards its earliest days, difficult to navigate and often unhelpful. And the remedy may be the same as it was a quarter century ago. It may be once again time for the surfers. Only different this time.
The only resistance to the current advance of AI is humanity. We are relearning that humans can see through the bullshit. There are examples everywhere.
A lot of personal bloggers already have slash pages, which are like personal directories. Makes sense to have old-school directories where a community contributes.
I’d like to remind you that our company policy is pro–Plagiarism Machine™. We’re a tech-forward, future-oriented company that doesn’t shy away from the promise of new innovation—even if that innovation is a Giant Plagiarism Machine™ that copy-pastes existing innovation into fake sentient sentences.
Asking questions isn’t being difficult. It’s being curious. It’s trying to understand the rationale behind actions and beliefs. But for some people in power—whether that’s a boss, a self-styled authority figure, even a Partner—questions are dangerous. Questions suggest that maybe they don’t have all the answers, that maybe their decisions aren’t flawless, and that maybe, just maybe, there’s a better way of doing things.
I deleted my Postroll page. Mostly I didn’t like saving links somewhere so that I could update my Postroll page at some later date. It was a clunky way to share links.
The Postroll page had a few links that I thought were still worth sharing, so I queued them up as individual posts, scheduled throughout tomorrow.
Moving forward, I’ll share links as regular posts and tag them with the links category.
Two sites for streaming non-commercial radio stations.
Finally finished reading this. I found notes that I started reading this in 2023 (?!?). I did put the book down for several months, more than once.
A lot of chapters could be condensed. Plus, overall the content is depressing considering gestures around at the world.
I’m not sure I can recommend the book. But if the idea is interesting to you, check out the essay that David Graeber wrote first, that later became the basis for this book.
Today is Free Comic Book Day! Check out your local comic book store. Some public libraries participate, too!
That action figure trend but make your own art. This idea came from patouret on Instagram.
📺 The new episode of Doctor Who is proper creepy sci-fi and it’s Very Good.
I’ve been a bit quiet online lately because 1) work has been hectic, so I don’t feel like being on a computer more than I have to and 2) I was busy prepping for zine fest.
Work is still kind of hectic? (I don’t want to jinx anything.) And zine fest was a blast. So now I have open time again and hopefully I can catch up on some blogging in the coming weeks.
New zine from Robin Sloan (It’s a big tri-fold. Nice format.)
Issue 2 of Pouch arrived, and it looks amazing! The bunnies! This issue includes product reviews, journaling tips, and lots of page layouts for inspiration.
Check out @pouch.studio on Instagram.
At some point in the last month or so, I read a blog post (or a newsletter?) about someone who journals both digitally and on paper. They collect screenshots and images in a document. When the page is full, they print it out and paste the images into a paper notebook.
I wanted to revisit that post, but I can’t remember where I read that. It might have been on Warren Ellis’s website (or newsletter). But I scrolled back a few months and did not find it.
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Related – If you do something similar…collect stuff digitally and then print it to paste into a notebook…what’s your process like?
I found out about doodle grids, just randomly, and my brain is all 🤯
Last weekend I went to Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. I’ve been there several times in the summer and once in the winter. But never in March. Not much to see outside at this time of year, so here are photos from the conservatories.
I’ve been using Substack to send my monthly newsletter for the past 3 years. I wanted to change to a different platform, and I wanted to remove my posts from Substack.
I reviewed my past issues on Substack to see if there was any content I wanted to keep. I wasn’t interested in re-creating past newsletter issues, but if there was something worth keeping, I could turn it into a blog post.
But here’s the thing.
The way I build my newsletter issues aligns with POSSE. I post to my sites during the month, and then I select from there what goes into the newsletter. I do add some notes, but not info that’s worth keeping (like brief commentaries on movies or TV shows I watched).
Sometimes I include zine previews in my newsletter, but eventually that info makes its way to a blog post later.
There wasn’t anything I had to migrate out of my Substack posts, because the main newsletter content comes from my sites.
This is probably my best personal example (so far) of the benefits of POSSE. Leaving Substack wasn’t a lot of work because the content I wanted to keep was already on my sites, and not exclusively on Substack.
