Liz LawleyDec 10, 2022
Annalee Newitz 🍜
Internet evolution:
Usenet: find your people! there are a few dozen of them on rec.arts.funny!
Listservs: find your people! there are 100 of them on this obscure list devoted to Marxist cultural criticism!
Blogs: find your people! each time one of them visits your site, your counter will increment! look! it has reached four digits!
Social media: find your people! there are several million strangers who are calling you names!
Post-social media: find your people! there are several dozen of them!
Dec 10, 2022 at 12:36amWeb
Show threadAlex, the Hearth FireDec 10, 2022
@annaleen several dozen is plenty
Show threadaresDec 11, 2022

@WizardOfDocs @annaleen

maybe several dozen sitting in silent contemplation, quaker-style, is the post-post-social-media

(not my idea, just read ezra klein's latest https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/11/opinion/what-twitter-can-learn-from-quakers.html )

Opinion | The Great Delusion Behind Twitter

We need a thoughtful alternative that doesn’t exist yet.

The New York Times
Show threadPrairie_DogDec 10, 2022
@annaleen This reminded me of Web Rings! They allowed all of the websites that had a specific type of content to link to each other. That way all of the the niche sites dedicated to a obscure thing could help each other.
Show threadAnnalee Newitz 🍜Dec 10, 2022
@digitalrodent I was just thinking about webrings ... it was a li'l bit like federated media
Show threadPrairie_DogDec 10, 2022
@annaleen You’re right! The internet of the past become the internet of the future?
Show threadAnnalee Newitz 🍜Dec 10, 2022
@digitalrodent humans are always vacillating between megacities and villages
Show threadJohn HaydenDec 10, 2022
@annaleen @digitalrodent feels like we're all walking away from Tikal back into the lush 9th c forest, like, let's just us set up a couple nice 2br huts and a firepit, f*ck that blood sacrifice back there
Show threadBill SeitzDec 10, 2022
@jhayden @annaleen @digitalrodent
Gone To Croatan
http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/GoneToCroatan
Gone To Croatan

Gone To Croatan

WebSeitz
Show threadDoc Edward Morbius ⭕​Dec 10, 2022

@annaleen And mostly ending up in the suburbs.

@digitalrodent

Show threadRachael BahlDec 10, 2022
@annaleen @digitalrodent I uttered an “oh yes!” at the mention of web rings. But annaleen had me at ‘Usenet’: aus.tv.x-files friends are still an important part of my life. 💜
Show threadPaul HornDec 10, 2022

@ozbandicoot @annaleen @digitalrodent I muttered an “oh, dear God … web rings *were* a thing!” at that mention.

Now I want to dig out my first couple gifs from way back …

Show threadPaul HornDec 10, 2022

@ozbandicoot @digitalrodent @annaleen found my ISP from the time period. Have to find the link to my home page.

I think the best I could get at my house was Verizon Silver. Too far away from the central office to get anything faster.

Show threadRachael BahlDec 13, 2022
@nrohluap @annaleen @digitalrodent That's kind of what I meant too Paul. My friend's geocities site was part of a webring. I never had enough patience for them.
Show threadBill SeitzDec 10, 2022
@annaleen @digitalrodent paging @lmorchard
Show threadLes OrchardDec 10, 2022
@billseitz @annaleen @digitalrodent y’all wanna join my fedi-ring? 😅 https://fediverse-webring-enthusiasts.glitch.me/
Home - Webring Enthusiasts of the Fediverse

Webring Enthusiasts of the Fediverse - Home
Show threadJeff MarkelDec 11, 2022
@annaleen @digitalrodent
Usenet WAS federated media
Show threadcazDec 10, 2022

@digitalrodent @annaleen

This is genuinely how I learned that transmasc people exist

Show threadBart GrahamDec 10, 2022
@digitalrodent @annaleen
Yes! I completely forgot about those.Didn't it have a random button?
Show threadPrairie_DogDec 10, 2022
@mawrter @annaleen Yes, thinking about it I think many of them did.
Show threadMartijn VosDec 10, 2022
@digitalrodent @annaleen Web rings were great. They enabled people to find more sites they were interested in before the rise of search engines. Then we switched to relying on Google, and now Google is only showing the big popular sites, and all the small niche sites are unfindable again. Maybe we should bring web rings back.
Show threadElena ``of Valhalla''Dec 10, 2022
@mcv @annaleen @digitalrodent

I've been thinking about web rings lately and I agree it would be nice to have them back!

Also, to find small niche sites, sometimes I do searches on search.marginalia.nu/ : it's not always a good way to get relevant results, but it's great to go on deep dives for random, interesting, content :)
Marginalia Search

search.marginalia.nu is a small independent do-it-yourself search engine for surprising but content-rich websites that never ask you to accept cookies or subscribe to newsletters. The goal is to bring you the sort of grass fed, free range HTML your grandma used to write.

search.marginalia.nu
Show threadJamie ClarkDec 10, 2022

@annaleen That analogy between Usenet and Mastodon is holding up pretty well so far.

Talk.bizarre, thanks very much. Welcome back to 1996.
Cc @tlr

Show threadJohn HaydenDec 10, 2022
@jamiexml @annaleen @tlr blinks in alt.fiction
Show threadUncle SlackyDec 10, 2022
@jamiexml @annaleen @tlr I used to hang out in t.b in the late 80s and early 90s - fortunately my ISP still carries netnews, for everyone else there's always https://www.eternal-september.org
www.eternal-september.org

Eternal September Usenet Server

Show threadmathewDec 10, 2022

@UncleSlacky @tlr @jamiexml @annaleen We need a directory of ex-t.b people. CJ and Ben Cox are active on Mastodon, not sure who else is.

Then again, when I met MJD he denied having ever heard of t.b, I imagine there are others who would sooner forget. And Carasso is still dead.

Show threadUncle SlackyDec 10, 2022
@mathew @tlr @jamiexml @annaleen Hey, it's mathew@mantis! Yeah, I heard about Carasso's death a while ago. XIbo is still around (http://xibo.com), as is KPD, apparently (https://www.facebook.com/kentpaul.dolan.79). I wonder whatever became of gypsy and just.janine? (Scratch that, I think this is j.j: https://twitter.com/justjenine) Ken Johnson still posts in t.b fairly often.
Xibo Excarnate

Show threadmathewDec 11, 2022
@tlr @jamiexml @annaleen @UncleSlacky Gypsy was on Facebook in the Carasso obituary threads, but I haven’t logged in to Facebook in years.
Show threadKlara in the hidden landDec 10, 2022
@annaleen More like several dozen of them active in each Discord server and hundreds of Discord servers.
Show threadAnnalee Newitz 🍜Dec 10, 2022
@klara haha yes this is definitely why my discord app is a giant mess
Show threadKeith AmmannDec 10, 2022
@klara @annaleen Discord is IRC you can't log off of.
Show threadKlara in the hidden landDec 10, 2022
@KeithAmmann @annaleen In fairness the big IRC users I knew back in the day didn't do a lot of logging off.
Show threadEggmont 🐘Dec 10, 2022

@annaleen
Now you can afford to have a pizza party.

Ideal.

Show threadDan HonDec 10, 2022
@annaleen who needs more than a dunbar's worth of their people anyway
Show threadDerek Powazek 🐐Dec 10, 2022
@danhon @annaleen Anyone with anything to sell, for a start.
Show threadAnnalee Newitz 🍜Dec 10, 2022
@fraying @danhon it's true. the loss of social media is very tough for me as an author. Twitter was a reliable way to get the word out about new books. TikTok is nice, but unless you go viral it's unhelpful. And even if you DO go viral, it may not help get the word out to people who care about nerdy scifi books. :)
Show threadDan SinkerDec 10, 2022
@annaleen @fraying @danhon I feel this so hard.
Show threadDan HonDec 10, 2022

@annaleen @fraying My suspicion is that Twitter made it easier to grow/find an audience *fast* (or, rather, faster than any of the previous methods).

And given that the pace of life isn't exactly slowing down...

Then again I keep coming back to the whole "maybe going this fast wasn't a good idea, and we're not ready for it yet as a species..."

Show threadShannon ClarkDec 10, 2022

@annaleen @fraying @danhon two anecdotes while my Twitter followers fluctuated between 2500–3500 for basically my entire 15 years on the site, and my followers here are much smaller the most engagement I’ve ever had with a social media post has been here (over 1000 favorites, boosts and replies)

And sharing a link here about a sale Orbit Books is having on their debut authors for 2022 led to a lot of engagement and very likely sales

Show threadDerek Powazek 🐐Dec 10, 2022
@Rycaut @annaleen @danhon a hopeful story! Thank you!
Show threadHella (old account)Dec 10, 2022

@Rycaut @annaleen @fraying @danhon

#SellingBooks might work here, too. At least it works from my #BuyingBooks perspective.

I've already found 2 #author's I haven't heard of before (who write books I am interested in). And already bought 3 books by one of this authors.

(Haven't written a #Bookwyrm post, yet)

Please use #hashtags, include #links to the bookpage (and you favourite indie ebook shop), #blurbs

Show threadmathewDec 10, 2022
@danhon @annaleen @Rycaut @fraying Same here. Fewer followers, an order of magnitude more actual engagement.
Show threadDerek Powazek 🐐Dec 10, 2022
@annaleen @danhon yeah, as someone with a product to sell, it’s been a rough transition.
Show threadDoc Edward Morbius ⭕​Dec 10, 2022

@annaleen The history of book marketing (and financing and production) is its own fascinating little story.

Many of the popular magazines of the ~1880s -- 1950s were effectively book catalogues / showrooms, many offered by publishers themselves.

With the rise of radio and television, magazines became market-segmentation tools for identifying market segments (news, business/management, various hobbies and later fandoms, homemakers / families, etc.), roughly 1960s -- 1990s.

The rise of the Internet killed both models pretty effectively.

Hamilton Holt's "Commercialism and Journalism" (1909) is a fave of mine, covering part of this story (mostly news journalism, dailies, weeklies, and monthlies): https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft

@fraying @danhon

Commercialism and journalism : Holt, Hamilton, 1872-1951 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

26

Internet Archive
Show threadDerek Powazek 🐐Dec 10, 2022
@dredmorbius @annaleen @danhon I love this - thank you. We think of community as somehow separate from commerce, but that's ahistorical and idealistic. The two have always been intertwined.
Show threadDoc Edward Morbius ⭕​Dec 11, 2022

@fraying And there's nothing authors talk about so much amongst themselves as the writing bizness itself.

There's a collection of letters I'm vaguely aware of involving Leo Tolstoy talking of Charles Dickens's apparently novel practice of serialising his novels in magazines. That's part of the financing / production bit I was alluding to above, though I left it out of that toot.

(I'm not sure where this appears, though if it rings a bell with anyone I'd hugely appreciate a pointer.)

And of course the Golden Age of the American Short Story existed mostly to sell cigarettes and booze. Which were also consumed by the authors themselves, as an early instance of the circular economy ....

@annaleen @danhon

#LeoTolstoy #CharlesDickens #writing #authors #serialisatiion

Show threadJeri DanskyDec 11, 2022

@fraying @annaleen Community & commerce have long been intertwined in my mind: both physical & online communities.

I bought Annalee's Four Lost Cities after she came to Quarantine Book Club; that's one community. I've recommended Milk Barn products because you're part of my online community & I trust you.

Now Mastodon is becoming one of my communities, too. And while I don't buy much, I've already made 3 purchases from folks here.

I hope Mastodon can evolve to support all sorts of creators.

Show threadDan HonDec 10, 2022
@fraying @annaleen ok, and "find your people" is different from "find your customers"
Show threadAmy HoyDec 10, 2022

@annaleen @fraying @danhon as someone who teaches people to find their customers, i endorse this message.

not the same at all.

Show threadDerek Powazek 🐐Dec 10, 2022
@danhon @annaleen not as different as you might think when you’re selling Patreon subscriptions or small farm support.
Show threadAnnalee Newitz 🍜Dec 10, 2022
@danhon @fraying absolutely. there is overlap, but it's not the same.
Show threadDoc Edward Morbius ⭕​Dec 10, 2022

@danhon Advertisers, propagandists, spy chiefs, manipulators, swindlers, and politicians.

Though I may have repeatedly repeated myself.

@annaleen

Show threadTHOMnottomDec 10, 2022
@annaleen
Show threadannaravenDec 10, 2022

@annaleen

I see the "arc" you're building so I'll avoid pulling a "well actually". 😜

Show threadShady LaneDec 10, 2022
@annaleen I think Placebo summed up social media perfectly in their song "Too Many Friends".
Post-social media is a more appropriate forum. Like having a meeting with a few like-minded people instead of trying to talk in a stadium full of randoms and haters.
Show threadmathewDec 10, 2022

@shadylane @annaleen I like Chumbawamba’s “Add Me” myself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2TuohSsw4k

Add Me

YouTube
Show threadRob LandleyDec 10, 2022
@annaleen Dunbar's number?
Show threadBeau DaignaultDec 10, 2022
@annaleen 🏆
FTW
Show threadKanaMaunaDec 10, 2022
@annaleen There were never more than dozens. The rest were bad special effects.
Show threadT4$Dec 10, 2022
@annaleen This completely matches my experience from 1988 onward. The only difference is I also had a stop in the journaling community on Slashdot which I equate to "forums". Otherwise pretty identical. And I theorize the reason it is fun in the beginning is the technical hurdles filter the people. Fewer technical hurdles mean less of a filter.
Show threadPeter ButlerDec 10, 2022

@georgelenzer @annaleen Yes! I was almost thinking there needs to be a "forums" or "community blogs" (like Metafilter) between blogs and social media.

That was a serious bridge to social media -- the transition to blogging by yourself on your own site to blogging with others on a shared site.