Annalee Newitz 🍜Dec 10, 2022
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!
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 Butler

@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.

Dec 10, 2022 at 3:25amWeb
Show threadAnnalee Newitz 🍜Dec 10, 2022
@peterbutler @georgelenzer yeah I was thinking that I mooshed a lot of things together under "social media" -- definitely needs some unpacking
Show threadmathewDec 10, 2022
@georgelenzer @peterbutler @annaleen Check out WriteFreely / write.as - shared blogging communities on the fediverse.