Category: Internet

RELY ON NOTHING YOU CAN’T TAKE WITH YOU

From One Thing’s ‘The new rules of media‘ from December:

“Rely on nothing you can’t take with you. For now, Substack email lists and Stripe charges are still portable. If they weren’t, I would move to Ghost, because Substack’s incentive is to get you as locked in as possible. (Patreon still keeps your Stripe info, therefore fuck Patreon.) The same goes for audiences: Direct traffic, through homepages or email inboxes, is the most reliable because no one can take it from you, but it’s the hardest to cultivate.”

Discoverability is a myth propped up on social media’s legion of bots and active users. Yes, some people won, but that had to happen, so other people could see the lottery winners and believe they could win, too.

FRAIL CONNECTIONS

Our connections are only as strong as the technology in place that allows it. This is why I warn against using Facebook to stay in touch with friends and family – if that connection is cut, you account is suspended, the company implodes – you are no longer connected with friends and family.

All this talk now of new social media networks, as if the only way forward is based on the idea of setting up new accounts and importing our address books, when in fact we already have our address book from which we can communicate with friends and family.

Seems we like to stay in touch from afar, though, which is weird to me. I don’t need to know the breakfast choices of the kid who sat behind me in 10th grade science class. I don’t need to know every career move of people 1,000 miles away who can only be troubled to drop a “happy birthday!” text when prompted by a algorithm to encourage engagement.

Our brains are only capable of so many connections. There are a few people in our life, right now, nearly in arms reach, who we could grow closer to and go deeper with. Instead we keep seeking these lite-connections with people who only think of us when an algorithm deems it so.

IT’S EMBARRASSING TO POST THINGS ON THE INTERNET NOW

From Noah Kalina:

I was out taking pictures and I made a picture that I really like. I was working on it and I was like, “This is so good.” And I was like, “What am I going to do with this?”

My natural inclination is to want to post it on the internet, but why? I almost feel like it’s embarrassing to post things on the internet now.

More thoughts here.

HOW TO WRITE ONLINE

Solid advice for writing online, from Sean Goedecke:

  • Try and find opinions you have that lots of people disagree with. Those are the interesting opinions others might want to read about
  • Ideas should come naturally from doing actual work, not from sitting and reflecting on what a good blog post would be
  • It’s OK to write multiple posts about the same thing
  • I deliberately don’t include every caveat – good readers will know I’m only writing about my old experience; bad ones won’t care anyway
  • I try to be upfront about my experience so readers can judge how seriously to take what I’m saying
  • Set up a RSS feed and some kind of analytics

Read more at ‘Writing a tech blog people want to read‘ (via Hacker News).

1,000 DISPLAY ADS

We’re in 2025 and websites are still jamming as many ads as possible onto every nook and cranny. There are eight display ads on this one page, every three paragraphs.

Absolutely boggles the mind that this is the best we’ve come up with, the only way we can make it work.

Consider 1,000 true fans? Fuck no, how about 1,000 display ads? That’s all this is.

ODDS AND SODS

Some website housekeeping;

In the last week or so I’ve finally got the site for Social Media Escape Club up and running. It was actually my Close Mondays site, and I switched the domain name to socialmediaescape.club with my buddy who runs I Heart Blank – heartily recommend him for all your WordPress hosting needs.

Found Senja last Thursday via this post from Brand Burnout. I set it up before my weekly Escape Pod Zoom call to collect testimonials, and included the link in the follow up email that Luma sends out after a call. I got two testimonials from that one call, including this one, which I think is a definite win.

I also started uploading all my Social Media Escape Club videos to YouTube, just in case Substack goes sideway. I’ll be posting all interviews there, and video drops like this:

BTW – I love the format of this video: https://frontofficeco.substack.com/p/opening-a-menswear-store-by-myself

I wish I could embed it here, but it’s only on Substack – womp womp!

META WANTS MORE SPEECH

Meta (the homebase of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Whatsapp) is rolling back their ‘third party fact-checking program.’

As The Verge is reporting, “Meta’s policy changes allow calling gay and trans people ‘mentally ill’ while removing a ban on referring to women as ‘household objects.’”

“But it’s how I keep in touch with family!”

I know Facebook has entangled many families and groups in their walled garden, but that’s the point. And the Meta environment is just gonna get more toxic, most likely on Instagram and Threads, too.

It’s okay to have boundaries around what services you use, and establish healthy ways to stay in touch.

Give friends and family your cell # and / or email address (or don’t) and log out if you need to.

SEEKING LESS NOTIFICATIONS

See, the thing is I like Substack Notes. I really like the people and the connections that can be built there. But as I near 5000 subscribers (!!!), the mental load required to keep up on Notes has begun to tip.

I really enjoy answering people’s questions that are posed to me in the comments, sometimes even with video. But that’s not the load. I relish that!

It’s the “17 people liked this post,” or people re-stacking things, and being notified as such. Sure, knowing 57 shared a recent post is nice and all, but I don’t need to know that in real time.

And if it’s at this level with 5,000 subscribers, what it like at 10,000?

This is why comments are turned off on this blog. I am still reachable, but there’s friction.

A wonderful human reached out to me a week or so ago, asking if I was okay in regards to a sort of somber Christmas time post I made. That was wonderful. I welcome that.

Will someday I get too many personal emails? Maybe. But that’s a problem I haven’t had in quite some time.

Most of the “too many emails” came from when I was an editor of a music blog, with very many one-sided asks from various industry people, and multiple internal emails from the mega corp I was working for.

But I like emails with people, talking about these anti-social media things. I like my weekly Zoom calls with people talking about these anti-social media things.

I guess it’s a matter of energy.

Checking the notifications of LIKES and RESTACKS on Substack benefits the people who make Substack while zapping my energy and enthusiasm.

If you’d like, send me an email. It’s easy to find.

BENCH AND BUTTONDOWN

Well, Bench is back. Bought by another company, apparently.

I didn’t want to just download my data from them, because I heard it’s not a very “transportable” format, so I’m hooked back up with Bench at least until I can get my 2024 books settled and my taxes filed, then I’m out.

Also spoke with Buttondown today about moving Social Media Escape Club. I just wanna send emails, you know? Yes, I love the ability to embed video right to the site, and the audio functions, but Substack is very much social media these days, and it doesn’t make send to have Social Media Escape Club to exist on a social media platform.

MAYBE CENTRALIZED KINGDOMS OF POWER AND INFLUENCE AREN’T THE ANSWER

I wrote this almost a year ago, about how waiting for the tech-bro overlords to deliver us a better app isn’t the answer.

Why have we become compliant little pawns in all this?

Are we so powerless to change the current situation that we sit back and hope somebody else fixes everything?

And then what? That person will sell the company to a Nabisco+Tide hedge fund subsidiary, and we’ll be back where we started.

Maybe centralized kingdoms of power and influence aren’t the answer.

I speak of this in regards of course to the creative community (artists, writers, photographers, bands) expecting something to be like early social media, so pure and good (read: let people click my links).

But everything requires jumping from platform to platform. Telling all your friends to sign up for this new thing, which is better than the other things, until the new thing turns out to be a dud, until another new thing comes along.

It’s Mastodon. No wait, Post. No, it’s Bluesky!

Going to a new restaurant in town doesn’t require that you sign up for a new account, you just go there and pay with your money.

This is how I equate email newsletters and websites.

Every smart phone ships with an email app and a web browser.

Yeah, but Seth, email is crazy, and nobody goes to websites anymore.

Okay, fine, admit defeat and bow to the rich tech megacorps – they’re surely the answer.

Or, we just go back to local scenes. Zines in the mail. Websites that we discover because our friend sends us a link, or we know the two people who run it.

Bring back directories, blogrolls, and webrings.

The allure of “everyone is on it” was a lie, made up of bots and people who didn’t care, but the platforms inflated everything to make you think they were on your side.

Buy a domain name. Set up an email list. Update your website.

It’s nearing 2025, and we’re tired of the platform game.