Anyway where were we

Ah, yes, so my doctor’s appointment is actually tomorrow and not last week, which we realized after sitting in the waiting room for way too long. Awk-ward. Anyway, tomorrow I go see the doctor.

I’ve been pretty active (for me) over on my notes page and have been enjoying a life free of social media. I highly recommend micro.blog to everyone. For as low as $1/month you can have a fully operational space to share all your thoughts. And your thoughts are important – don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. If you create/have a blog, let me know and I’ll read it.

One of my big goals for the year has been to be more active on the interwebs, and I’m pretty happy with my progress so far. I’d tried setting up shop in different places – Mastodon, Bluesky – and while I’m still technically there, I’m not very active.

At some point I might upgrade to the $5/month micro.blog plan which lets me cross-post all my content to different places (including Tumblr!), but I’m not in any hurry to do that. I think the handful of people who like to read what I write know where to find me. If anything, I might upgrade just to support the project.

I think my favorite thing about micro.blog is that there are no metrics to obsess over. Manton Reese talked a bit about that a couple of days ago:

When we launched Micro.blog, we got pushback on the lack of likes and reposts and follower lists and trends and global firehouse. Now eight years later I’m confident our approach is an important niche on the social web.

I agree.

Shortly after reading that, I came across a different post “Hiding metrics from the web” in which Rodrigo Ghedin shows how to hide all those numbers social media platforms like to push at you.

In 2012, artist Ben Grosser released a browser extension called Facebook Demetricator. Once installed, it hid all metrics from Facebook’s interface: likes, comments, notifications, unread messages, and so on. “What’s going on here is that these quantifications of social connection play right into our (capitalism-inspired) innate desire for more,” he explained. In creating his extension, Ben questioned why there were so many numbers “a system (and a corporation) that depends on its user’s continued free labor to produce the information that fills its databases.”

This obsession with numbers is to the detriment of authenticity. A “like” is easy and convenient but lacks meaningful connection. Follower lists are full of fake accounts. Comment sections are full of bots. “AI slop” is everywhere.

But the Internet is vast and full of treasures if you go out of your way to look.

• Get an RSS reader
• Add sites/accounts you trust
• Follow links to discover new things
• Share what you find with others

In related news, yesterday marked the three year anniversary of my permanent ban from Twitter (🎉). The ban notice stated “evading suspension” as the reason which was odd seeing as I’d never been suspended before. No amount of appeals got my account reinstated and it made me realize the importance of owning your digital content.

And on that note, I’m off to get some lunch.