O, it me...

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#rambling…

Feels like the internet is again becoming a place where creators are front and center, but differently…

Unlike before, where the front-and-center-ness had to do with the lack of any coherent structure, this time around it feels more like it has to do with all the institutional structure getting so crowded. As in, platforms can’t really disambiguate from one another except for the people who drive their content. I suspect most content developers don’t have the patience to crosspost to span multiple platforms… after all, repackaging to fit the needs of each platform gets more and more tiresome the more fractured the universes become.

The problem I generally have with generating for Internet these days is that I don’t find much pleasure in feeding platforms. I also don’t really feel any reciprocity of value… I guess it feels like when I feed platforms my content, I am building in an appetite for an audience to go BACK to the platform, not to like, engage directly with me?

But like, who is the “ME” behind all of this? I mean, not like the real version of me, but the online persona of me… even that feels clouded by platform-centric thinking. Maybe this is why I’m blogging today, to set a flag back on my internet property… a “ALBERT WAS HERE” scratching into the wall of some semi-public digital space to prove to myself that this version of me isn’t not here…

Wat is happening on the web?

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As Twitter seems to be slowly 4chan-ing itself out of existence, I find myself wondering: why am I still here doomscrolling this godforsaken site? Does witnessing the death of a community provide pleasure or something? When did I even get here and what brought me here in the first place?

Whenever I lurked (a lot), I always felt like, well, a lurker. An outsider not clever enough to play the game of 280 chars (or 140 before then) — too slow to clap-back, but always eager to watch tweeps attempt to command compelling ideas with the limited real estate they had. Usually it was meh, but sometimes it was gold.

Another reason I felt out of place in the Twittersphere is that, unlike the gladiators who I watched, for as long as I can remember I’ve felt a strong personal reluctance (maybe even a cowardice) to discussing anything political online. Like, I do consider myself quite politically passionate and active, but the idea of doing it on the web felt out of my comfort zone.

But maybe one reason I’m so glued to this most recent turn of events in the world of internet culture is that it is the story of a cultural practice (making edge-lord proclamations at <280 chars at a time that I saw value in but hardly participated in) finally falling out of fashion.

And while this destruction of culture is genuinely sad (given how many real communities / careers / movements etc were forged in it), somehow this whole saga feels like a release for me. Like, Twitter felt like the last monolithic internet cultural hub, and it’s finally dismantling, and now the internet feels completely unfederated and wild-west again… at least for me it does because I’m not caught up in the newer forms of social media, and am good to stay away from it for a while.

I guess all of this is to say: this post is meant to just document where it feels like my compass is pointing: the internet feels weird again (in a good way), and somehow it feels like there’s breathing room for me to blog again, even if only for myself.

VR Dance Clip

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Made a thing a while ago… posted to Twitter but totally neglected to post it here. Anyhow, here’s an animated gif of a music video I made:

Posted this to YouTube, but unfortunately there’s a content match that prevents folks in many countries (including the US) to view it. Anyhow, recently discovered a service that will match two videos on a 3rd party site… so now I can assemble it back together!

So to view, check the link below. Timing works out best in Chrome (and timing is a lot in a dance clip).

Click here to watch.

I'm deplatforming from social media...

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About a week ago I posted this on FB:

https://www.facebook.com/phedhex/posts/10109136712222269

This came just a few days after I made a Twitter thread on the topic of “Designing for Exit”:

https://twitter.com/phedhex/status/1196724690808496128

The public declaration that I want to design a way out of these systems has been good for me. At this point, I merely have an awareness and a commitment, but that’s still good. I imagine that the next steps here are to continually build upon a code of conduct to help me feel more in control.

****

On the same topic, last night I was talking about some of these issues with a friend and I came up with a term I was pretty happy with — which was “attention economy pyramid scheme”. This describes what it feels like to be producing content that keeps people coming back for more.

As an example, I think we all sense that YouTube is a machine that runs on consuming attention. They deploy creators and incentivize us to capture audience (more attention). They feed us with tips and tricks on how to create successful channels, which sometimes feel like instructions on how to create click bait. The whole thing feels kinda greasy. Like, yes, I’m creating an audience, but I’m also shuttling my captured audience off into the rabbit hole that is the YT recommendation algo — but like it’s a tax I’m willing to pay.

On top of this, I can sense that the way to win the game is to create content that gets your audience to proselytize and funnel in more attention.

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Anyhow, I don’t have answers yet. I can’t help but feel that I’m just being an annoying old curmudgeon who just pines for an internet that no longer fits in today’s world. That said, I’m going to experiment with trying to be more thoughtful and deliberate with how I direct attention w/ my online activity. I have a new soft rule for myself that I won’t post to FB anymore EXCEPT to whine about this stuff.

Groovember

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Background

In 2017 I posted 30 daily videos, each of me freestyle dancing. Had a lot of fun and grew a lot as a dancer (my post about the experience).

Later that year I learned about “Inktober” — a social media event where throughout October, lots of people post photos of their drawings to social media and hashtag it “#inktober”. To help along, the Inktober website also publishes a list of optional prompts to help as both a nugget of inspiration and as a way to keep the experience feeling fresh.

The Plan

So this year, I wanted to do something analogous for dance. So I’m basically going to just follow the Inktober rules, except “dance” instead of “draw” and “#groovember” instead of “#inktober”.

Groovember Prompts

The only deviation from Inktober (apart from dance vs draw) is the prompts. I wanted a set of words that felt more active than the Inktober ones, so I selected 30 words at random from here.

1. lunge

2. sanctify

3. inspect

4. persecute

5. force

6. jerk

7. elucidate

8. ridicule

9. listen

10. marshall

11. jostle

12. value

13. deter

14. invite

15. goad

16. recreate

17. nourish

18. jam

19. hope

20. lend

21. omit

22. lag

23. support

24. enchant

25. hover

26. tyrannize

27. dictate

28. forbid

29. implicate

30. navigate