In keeping Metal Bandcamp Gift Club going over the years (and sometimes not going, oops), it’s been a struggle to match the sense of community we had on Twitter back in 2016. As you know, quite a bit of things changed back in 2016.
I’ve resisted going all-in on Twitter again, mostly because a lot of people I know that were once involved don’t even do Twitter much anymore, for some pretty obvious reasons: their inaction against dangerous jerks, their inaction against harassment except when it might happen to men, nazi stuff – the list goes on and on.
I don’t want to tell my friends to come visit me at a dangerous bar filled with sexist creeps, jerks, and nazis, so why would I do so online?
So, Metal Bandcamp Gift Club has mostly been an email newsletter, and it’s been working well. Each day that there’s a birthday, we send out an email to about 120 people and a handful of those people buy music for someone they don’t know from their Bandcamp wishlist. It’s wonderful.
People feel good, they discover music, and artists and musicians and label make money.
But, that’s pretty much where it ends.
Yes, some members thank each other on Twitter, but blink and you’ll miss it. And heck, Twitter might not even let all that many people see that post, either.
Now a post on Circle (like above) is a post for every member to see. And if you blink, you can find it a day or a week later. Many times someone on Twitter will talk about a new album, or some gem they found, but if you’re not on Twitter right then and there, it could be gone forever. Same with year end album talk – there could be a great thread happening in real time on a Thursday night, but if you’re doing something else, and you check back in on Saturday, it’s probably gone.
I don’t know for sure if Circle is the solution, but I know for sure the current state of Twitter (and all of social media) is a big problem, and I’m trying to fix it for our little corner of the internet.