Some images from a recent trip to Sweden
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A Short Lived Interest in Substack Notes
When I heard about Substack Notes I felt an interest in the project. I liked the idea of a site where we could write long form posts on one side, and short form posts on the other. I liked the idea of having conversations with people and creating new connections. That’s why I use social media and that’s what makes social media social, rather than a news website or some other form of website.
The flaw emerged in two manners. The first is when content creators showed their huge growth in subscribers. It went from being a social network to an influencer network. It went from conversations on a human scale to lecture hall, or even stadium monologues. It went from being about individuals listening to each other, to influencers talking at people, but no longer being able to hear and interact. It went to being a broadcast platform.
The second flaw is the FOMO that is caused by giving people with hundreds of paying subscribers a verified tick. It creates a two class social network. You have normal people, using it as a social network, and the others monologuing.
People like to say “You can use the social network as you like” but this isn’t true. This isn’t possible. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube are aol about the influencers, rather than about individuals. It becomes impossible to find organic conversations because you’re always thrown into a big crowd rather than a small gathering. The result is trolling, but also solitude and loneliness. Social media should neutralise loneliness, not exacerbate it.
That’s why I like Wordpress.com, and wordpress.org. With both aspects of the same project you have a community, without it being a competition. Social networks should be about conviviality, not a faceless mass.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube force us to see what the mass audience people are doing, at the cost of making ordinary people and creators invisible. It encourages introverts to withdraw, rather than participate.
Years ago I realised that if you’re an introvert, and you go out to socialise, you’re just there to flatter the ego of the extrovert that everyone is listening to. If you’re an introvert and quiet, or not as well spoken as others you are invisible. You will gain as much, by staying home, as going out. Social media has become the same.
Back in 2007 I asked “But what about the ROI of Twitter and Facebook users?” In 2023 not only has this question not been heard, but the mistake is spreading. I’d rather work on projects than waste time on networks where I am invisible.
Conclusion
By showing graphs of how readership exploded for some users on Substack, and by adding “this person has hundreds of paying subscribers Substack created a class system on their social network that I left Twitter to avoid. If Mastodon, Substack and other alternatives all have the same flaws as Twitter, then why do we leave Twitter? Why waste thousands of hours rebuilding a social network? That’s why I am blogging again, because this is an investment of my time, rather than a waste of it. It is an amusing paradox that the pandemic, rather than help social networks thrive, has destroyed them.
The Immature Coming of Age of Social Media
Around a decade and a half ago I grew tired of seeing blog headlines that said “The top ten blah blah”, “Three signs that …” and more. It grew tiring to see all those headlines, to a point where it generated the term clickbait. The idea of a headline being written to attract people to a click where there was no content behind it.
Today I worry that the juvenile behaviour and attitude of social media, and to some degree mainstream media, is making it hard to have meaningful adult conversations. A lot of social media is about sensationalism, and tabloid superficiality, rather than meaningful, pleasant conversation and idea sharing.
I realise that terms like woke are apparently based on African American culture in the US to describe white people that are in tune with the reality of the situation, but I hate the term. When I worked in Human Rights I came across the term “The decade of the People of African Descent and I much prefer this term. It isn’t about race, chrominance or anything else. It’s about where a family might have originated. I have no problem with “of European descent” or other terms, because it brings the conversation towards migration and mobility.
Woke is a word that already has a meaning, that we use every single morning. To use it to insult others makes it a useless term, rather than a useful term. I used social media to find pleasant conversations, for friendship, and for more, as time advanced friendhips.
This is the time of year when people complain about the changing of the clocks, and I have the view that those who live far enough from the equator will love the move of clocks forwards and backwards, because it signifies the arrival of spring or the arrival of winter. It also signals an extra hour in bed when the weather is colder and more unpleasant, and waking an hour earlier, when the sun rises an hour earlier. I love the change of clocks.
Others don’t, and wnt to argue about how we shouldn’t change the clocks according to the season. People discussed their hatred of the clocks changing on Mastodon and my reflex is to keep the app closed, and to steer clear.
I loved social media when it was a pleasant, adult conversation about projects, aspirations, friendship and more. Now that it is childish bickering I prefer to take a step back. Why do we invest years of our lives on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social networks, only to see them bought by immoral people, and ruined. The death of Twitter has degraded my desire to invest time and effort into any social network.
If the pandemic was over for real, rather than for commercial reassons I would give up on social media completely. I would use telegram or signal, with a group of people and chat. Paradoxically, not having a car, having a broken arm and then three years of pandemic, encouraged me to dump whatsapp, facebook, instagram and now Twitter. I ran out of things to give up on.
Now I’d like the pandemic to be over. I’d like for there to be zero new cases for two weeks in a row, for the entire country, or even continent, so that I can rebuild a real life, and forget about “social” media, at last.
And Finally
And Finally I really don’t get why Auttomatic bought ActivityPub. For me the product is not ready to be seen as a product. I think that sale was premature.
Confined by Freedom
Some of us are confined by freedom. By this I mean that as society is opened up, as people are told that they don’t need to wear masks, that they don’t need to self-isolate and that they don’t need to show covid passes, so the freedom of others is taken away. During a pandemic there are two types of people. Those that hear the word pandemic and think “I need to self-isolate, wear a mask, and vaccinate.” and the others who think “Why should I do what the state tells me to do? I am my own person.”
Quarantines have already been shortened so people who could be contagious are allowed to move through society freely. At the same time there is discussion about not requiring people to wear masks, returning to work and not requiring covid passes.
If this was in a vacuum we could say “well, let’s see what happens.” except that we are not. We see that Denmark has gone from the BA-1 wave to the BA-2 wave. We see that in England, France, Switzerland and the US the number of sick children is going up. We also see that hospitalisations are increasing. If we look at a map of Europe now with levels of spread of the virus then the whole of Europe is dark red with serious Covid outbreaks.
This is the worst possible time to reopen society, because the virus is already virulent, and governments are not trying to contain it. All of the indicators above show that we have a choice to make for this spring and summer. Do we self-isolate and spend a third summer in solitude, or do we play pandemic roulette, hope for the best, and see whether we fall sick? I would prefer not to play pandemic roulette personally, so, for now, the summer will be solitary.
Playing with OpenAudible and Audiobookshelf
Last night I finished converting all my audiobooks to a DRM free format. In the process I learned that the m4b format renders much faster than mp3. I spent weeks trying to convert AAX files to mp3 and then by accident I agreed to convert files to m4b and it took the time it took for me to walk on my daily walk to be done.
Migrated to Audiobookshelf
Now that all the files have been converted to mp3 and m4b I have uploaded them to Audiobookshelf. Some files failed to import. The rest imported with ease. The advantage that I now have is that I can browse through my audiobook collection faster than if I use either Audible’s phone app and their website. The other advantage is that my files are self-hosted locally so unless my hard drives fail I have my own copy, as I would if I had bought physical books.
Fiddly
When you’re listening to Audiobooks on a laptop the website works well. When you’re listening on an iOS device the epxerience is slightly more complicated. You need to navigate to the website in a browser, find the book, and then start listening. If you use it for podcasts then it plays one podcast and then you need to select the next. On a computer podcasts play one after another.
Create Users
Audiobookshelf allows you to create users. You can have one that has admin privilieges that is used just to add podcasts and create libraries etc and a second one to use as a user. By seperating the two there is less chance of making a mistake.
You can create multiple libraries for multiple users, so in theory you can create a library per person, for them to upload their own books. You cannot restrict library A to user A, library B to user B etc. You can control whether people can upload, download and more. You can give people access to listen, via the site, but restrict who can download to keep.
And Finally
OpenAudible and Audiobookshelf give us a way to keep the content that we spent money buying for our own personal use. If Amazon or Audible go bankrupt then we do not end up with nothing, after spending 100+ usd per year for content. I like both OpenAudible and Audiobookshelf
Cascada
Mountain streams
Whilst some people are perfectly happy sitting at a desk chatting to others via webcams I prefer to be out and about streaming daily life. Today was one example of what I like to do. I went up to La Dole for a walk with the n95 and streamed a few landscapes for people following me on twitter to see.
We finally got caught out by some hail and thunder but my phone survived.
I want more people to do this type of thing. Come out and have fun, stream life as it happens. Show us what’s outside your living room or home office.