TG
Alison WilderDear Everybody,
PLEASE for the love of god stop posting your events only on Facebook.
Thanks,
Me
The Other Brook@alisynthesis ...which includes Instagram.
@theotherbrook it most definitely includes instagram. What an absolute piece of shit.
I know how out of touch I am because I honestly, legitimately cannot believe people still use ad-driven social media in 2025. I mean...REALLY???
It reminds me of the time I was like 19 and happily on mushrooms, walking down the street in Denton, TX, and I stopped in my tracks and was like, "wait...is this SERIOUSLY illegal??? No, no, I must be making that up because I'm on mushrooms."
@alisynthesis Ha! That is one tautology I can totally get behind.
I've been using adblockers for so long that when I see people using sites without them I can't believe they put up with that.
@theotherbrook crazy right? I clearly do not live in the real world. And also I don't want to.
@alisynthesis I'm not sure why (maybe it's ongoing exposure to all this fedi-wonderfulness, or maybe it's moving back to my place of 19 year-old mushroom wanderings) but lately I've been really noticing how ad-saturated the physical world around me is.
Maybe I'm turning into Cayce Pollard from William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. Which would be fine if I get to wear her cool bomber jacket.
@theotherbrook omg I haven't thought about Cayce in years! She is such a crush worthy character.
One of the things I love the most about New Hampshire is that billboards are illegal here. It's such a shock when I cross over the border on a highway and suddenly I'm just surrounded by ads.
@alisynthesis For a decade after we moved out here, every summer we'd drive back across the country to make our rounds of relatives stretching from Pennsylvania to Maine. It was during those years that states started banning billboards along the interstates. Which probably read to my increased rate of reading comic books to pass the time.
"ONLY 1,922 Miles to the SNAKE PIT in State Line, Idaho!"
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK@alisynthesis @theotherbrook since the 1980s billboards are restricted in Ipswich, Suffolk, England (there are way fewer than in similar towns) and National Highways also restricts how many can appear near fast highways and motorways (for road safety reasons)
@vfrmedia @theotherbrook it's so nice, right? See, government CAN improve daily life! 😂
@alisynthesis @theotherbrook what was impressive about Ipswich is the billboards were often paid for by a cigarette company which was one of the biggest employers in town at the time and the Council was *still* able to push back against that (although it became easier as over the years smoking became less socially acceptable)
(these pictures show what it used to be like before the ban and afterwards)
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK (@[email protected])
Attached: 2 images Falcon Street and St Nicholas Street, #Ipswich #Suffolk #England in late #1960s and #2024 (which also shows just how many #advertising #billboards were around in 1960s, and for unhealthy stuff like cigarettes and alcohol as well!)
@alisynthesis @theotherbrook whilst its likely that particular set of billboards were temporary whilst Friars House was built, that's also a massive amount of distraction for drivers on a 4 way junction with pedestrians crossing (today one of the roads is fully restricted to motor traffic and the others have various traffic calming schemes and parking restrictions)
The Witch of Crow Briar@vfrmedia @alisynthesis @theotherbrook Back in the idyllic days when Reliant Robins roamed free, unbothered by the predations of Mr Bean-driven Minis.
@crowbriarhexe @alisynthesis @theotherbrook there was an attempt as recently as 2000 to restart production of the Reliant Robin in Suffolk, although this faltered as the entrepreneur involved decided to be too much like Del Boy and start building the cars *before* he had got full approval from DVLA (the company went bankrupt by 2002).
It is still occasionally seen on the roads round here..
@vfrmedia @crowbriarhexe @alisynthesis Jeremy Clarkson didn't do the Robin's future prospects any favors when he rigged one so it rolled over on every corner. But on the other hand, attempting to launch one into space was fun.
Michael@theotherbrook @alisynthesis re ad saturation - yup. I grew up with ad-laden broadcast tv in the 1960’s after having ad-free tv in the late 1950’s in the UK. Ever after I have assiduously edited commercial messaging out of my life. Back when “jingles” were a thing, if I was out shopping for a product and that products tv ad jingle popped into my head I would put it back on the shelf. I taught grandson to close eyes and go lalala if he was watching an ad on tv.
Veronica Olsen@garrattguy These days, the only ads I'm exposed to are ad posters on shopping centres. That's pretty much it. I hate ads so much that I refuse to use any service that includes it and I cannot block it.
We have state TV here, and the handful of times I want to watch a news broadcast, that's the stream I go to. No ads. They have sponsors for some content, like sports, but I pretty much never watch that either.
Judge Earl P. Thayton@theotherbrook @alisynthesis I have tried to share the ad-free lifestyle with some friends and they look at me like I have two heads. They see their devices as akin to TVs... Their only control is changing the channel. Seizing more control than that is somehow more uncomfortable to them than enduring the ads.
My name is Gordo@theotherbrook @alisynthesis What's wild to me is that blockers have been more or less broken on Chrome for... at least a couple months at this point, and people haven't been leaving it in droves (and I'm sure many that have have ended up on Brave or Opera GX or whatever other corporate Chromium that doesn't make me feel any better, although I assume you can still block all the ads you want).
At some point people have to remember why they switched to Chrome in the first place ('cause it seemingly gave a fk about user experience) and jump ship for the very same reason, right?
...right!?
brightside@gordoooo_z @theotherbrook @alisynthesis Millions of people must have switched to Google Chrome cause they bought a Chromebook and an Android phone and now they're in a Google cold turkey rehab situation 
@brightside @theotherbrook @alisynthesis I think I know exactly one person who owns a Chromebook, and they stopped using it and replaced it with a Thinkpad within a year, but regardless, you're not wrong. I'm stuck in the ecosystem until I'm comfortable that I haven't forgotten any important accounts associated with the Gmail that was my primary email address for nearly 20 years (I got it in 2004, and only stopped using it 1.5-2 years ago).
ranjit@alisynthesis ugh yes 😭
Reilly Spitzfaden (they/them)@alisynthesis *so* frustrating. I really don't want to go on there ever, and it's annoying that the price of doing so is missing out on cool stuff (even on things like underground music events)
@reillypascal @alisynthesis its a massive problem here in England, friends I know who promote events are completely stuck with only using Facebook (which I also consider a potential security risk depending on the type of event)
@vfrmedia @reillypascal same here in New England. Also, people are extremely frugal here, and they have mostly gone with the "free" option.
metasilk@alisynthesis THIS.
In outreach work for our museum events we use:
- emails to individuals, local news, libraries, + neighbor forum
- events posted to our website, our google calendar, + neighborhood calendar
- ticketing platform (when needed) run by a weekly paper
- events + posts on facebook
- sometimes on insta
- likely to add bluesky
- occasionally flyers at local shops
People use different methods, so we do too.
Irina@alisynthesis And also Me.
Mark T. Tomczak@alisynthesis This is a hole in my online space post-Facebook: is there a good alternative online to what FB offers for events on group pages?
That may, unfortunately, be best-of-breed right now.
@mark If you have events that need to be posted, I would absolutely recommend doing it on your own website. There's just no good reason to trust a major corporation to have your best interest in mind.
There's not another social platform that replicates what Facebook has done there, and I honestly think that's a good thing. Moving from Facebook to the next big platform is just a recipe for another Facebook.
My two cents! 🙂
@mark I guess what I'm saying is that yeah, it's best of breed, but that breed shouldn't even exist. Like all those flat-faced dogs that are so adorable but they really can't breathe. 😂
@alisynthesis That makes sense, but almost no theater I know in town has their own website. if they don't just have a Facebook wall, they have a static site set up one time that gets updated quarterly with new photos of performances because that's all they know how to do.
The forces that made Facebook huge haven't changed: users don't want to maintain websites. They don't want to learn HTML, they don't want to learn how to publish, they definitely don't want to learn Internet security and want to outsource "We didn't get hacked for the sin of telling people when our performances were using a computer on the same LAN as our theater director's personal desktop" to someone else.
This is a non-trivial problem to solve. 😞
@mark I totally get that. That said, it's about as easy to set up a WordPress.com or squarespace site as it is to set up a Facebook page. No html required.
That's not how I would do it, but if it needs to be super cheap and easy, I would say that's a way better situation than Facebook.
@alisynthesis That makes sense. I should look into what that feels like these days.
We could really use something that you can drop in a box and is self-securing. All the benefits of local ownership with all the benefits of outsourcing security would be something close to the Grail, I think.
@mark I hear you! For work, I build websites for small and medium sized businesses, and I know how tough it can be.
But seriously, check out wordpress.com and the plugin I sent. I build self-hosted WordPress sites, and although I have personal reservations about WordPress.com for reasons that probably won't matter at all to you, I think it's a really great service for someone in your situation.
@mark and I do recommend a hosted service for a website If you don't have the will or the budget in your organization to perform maintenance. A lot of people seem to think the only cost of a custom website is the upfront cost, which is not true at all.
But a squarespace or a wordpress.com will handle all of the security, maintenance, etc. there will be frustrations when you want to do things that aren't possible, but overall I think it's a pretty good trade-off if your alternative is Facebook.
@mark eg https://wordpress.com/plugins/browse/events
I guarantee that setting this up is a job that anyone who can use a mouse and type can do!
resipiscent@mark @alisynthesis Nobody remembers to check a website unless it aggregates multiple events. There are quite a few free calendars, this is the way to go since the point of in-person public events is to create new community. It's a bit of work to post to each of these with their different templates but I do it for every concert at the Peacock Lounge in SF.
For theater in particular, there is
https://www.broadwayworld.com/submitnews.cfm
For music, free calendars:
https://www.songkick.com/concerts/42377347-elliott-levin-at-peacock-lounge
https://ra.co/events/2084029
https://dothebay.com/events/2025/2/13/elliott-levin-ensemble-so-ar-tanukispidercat-chlorine-aroma-tickets
https://discover.events.com/us/california/san-francisco/e/music/peacock-lounge-438792648
https://groups.io/g/Brutalsfx/message/165
https://eastbayexpress.com/events-calendar/#
@resipiscent @alisynthesis I wonder if anyone's working on this in the Fediverse space?
A Fediverse calendar that let you aggregate events by interest or geographic region feels like not-a-bad-fit for the protocol.
@mark @resipiscent it's not about people remembering to check a website. It's about doing outreach that points back to your website.
Facebook is withering, and you WILL need a new strategy. I have my doubts whether the social internet will ever be as consolidated around one platform again, thank goodness.
I did just learn about a new federated event platform! https://joinmobilizon.org/en/
@mark @alisynthesis There's also https://gath.io/ I tried creating events there for awhile but it was cumbersome, nobody wanted to respond/engage with it. It feels a little intrusive in that it presumed I wanted to treat the event as a poll with poll results. I don't. I want a calendar with more events than my own. There are Signal threads for local underground shows that work well because they're just a list of flyers (until people try to chatter about politics, but each user can just block those folks). Less is more... in fact the most useful, oldest, underground concert calendar in the SF Bay Area is the work of one person:
https://jon.luini.com/thelist/date.html
https://jon.luini.com/thelist/date.html
@resipiscent @mark turns out the punks were right all along
@mark @alisynthesis Pre-sale tickets has been its own puzzle, Eventbrite seemed to run the table until Dice.fm came along, I just bought tickets for a show at Cafe Oto in London, enough independent venues use it that it's become useful as a calendar to discover new artists and spaces. Dice lets a venue offer memberships, members get free/discounted tickets. It's specific to art and music, is built to embed video/audio, all around a better UI than Eventbrite.
https://dice.fm/event/92ml3o-mayuko-hino-lucas-granpa-abela-rubber-cement-7th-feb-the-lab-san-francisco-tickets
https://dice.fm/event/92ml3o-mayuko-hino-lucas-granpa-abela-rubber-cement-7th-feb-the-lab-san-francisco-tickets
Dec [{(
)}]@mark @resipiscent @alisynthesis
There's a simple PHP calendar called Feber written by @freebliss (developer of Faircamp) but I don't think it was intended to replace Facebook events.
There's a simple PHP calendar called Feber written by @freebliss (developer of Faircamp) but I don't think it was intended to replace Facebook events.
Simon Repp@dec23k thanks for the mention! Feber's indeed built with the intention to stay super simple and more geared towards internal/personal/group calendars (but happy to see it used in whatever way makes sense of course) - no roadmap for federation or such though :) @mark @resipiscent @alisynthesis
@freebliss @dec23k @mark @resipiscent that's awesome! That's exactly the kind of tool people *should* be using for most personal events. Purpose-built, light-weight, self-hosted, not a data hog.
@alisynthesis I agree! Happy to see that the idea appeals to others too, thank you for putting it so kindly! ( ◡‿◡ *)
noodlejetski 
@mark @alisynthesis Mobilizon is a Fediverse-connected alternative
Be_Outside@alisynthesis
all billionaire-owned for-profit surveillance networks pretending to be "social networks" are wrong... it's becoming more and more difficult to tolerate the folks that haven't figured that out yet.
If my 80-yr-old relatives can get the fuck off of fb, then so can anybody.
Those who stay have "reasons"... to support the billionaires and nazis whom are destroying our world... not trustworthy, not reasonable, not good.
Get off of those platforms!! 🤢
all billionaire-owned for-profit surveillance networks pretending to be "social networks" are wrong... it's becoming more and more difficult to tolerate the folks that haven't figured that out yet.
If my 80-yr-old relatives can get the fuck off of fb, then so can anybody.
Those who stay have "reasons"... to support the billionaires and nazis whom are destroying our world... not trustworthy, not reasonable, not good.
Get off of those platforms!! 🤢
I was so proud when my 73-year-old mom told me she quit Facebook.
@alisynthesis
I got my "old people" to connect on masto. They love it.
...lol, as long as I didn't describe as "complicated", they found it easy.
they're happy
I got my "old people" to connect on masto. They love it.
...lol, as long as I didn't describe as "complicated", they found it easy.
they're happy
Erik Ableson@alisynthesis @cthulku OTOH, if only people on Facebook are attending, maybe I should give your events a miss. (coming from a privileged and somewhat misanthropic view of people right now)
But yes, event communication should be wider than Facebook
Nav@alisynthesis If your event is only on Facebook then it does not exist. If your business is only on Facebook then that doesn't exist either. If I'm trying to find something and all links point to Facebook then I'll be going elsewhere. I miss the times when small businesses had actual websites.
Crys@alisynthesis Time for people to create FedEvents (really, simple but awesome name if that were to exist)
Galan Montgomery@Crystal @alisynthesis There's Mobilizon (joinmobilizon.org) already, but there doesn't seem to be a much activity on instances outside of France and Germany. I'm actually thinking about posting an event just to try to inject a touch more life.
Graham Ward@alisynthesis There are other better ways of promoting events other than on #Facebook Here is one that works well for charity, not for profit, both free and paid. https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/
Mix Mistress Alice💄@alisynthesis
I would rather let them do!
This way I instantly ignore events I would never wish to attempt.