Some Housekeeping Items
I’ve been meaning to mention a few things about this blog for a while, so here goes.
Social Media
A lot of my readers have yet to subscribe through Substack and still just click on the links I post on social media like FaceBook. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but social media is going through a great deal of change lately (there’s that thing about Elon Musk buying Twitter, for example). People in the know are all saying that the days when just anyone with a good website can promote themselves using social media are coming to an end. Increasingly, the only posts that most folks are going to see through casual browsing are going to be by people who are already famous, have paid adverts, or, are being promoted by company ‘pushing’ their content artificially.
In other words, ‘net neutrality’ is coming to an end unless you make a conscious effort to seek it out. That involves two things: finding a system that specifically enforces it, and, signing up for content instead of just expecting it to arrive at your door without any commitment on your part.
There are social media sites that aren’t driven by advertisers or algorithms designed to appeal to people’s negative emotions. One I’ve mentioned in the past is Mastodon. There’s another new one that I’m going to mention later down below.
One other thing you can do is subscribe to Substack. That’s because there is no ‘feed’ to follow. You subscribe to the authors you like. There’s also a search feature you can use to find new authors. There’s also a mechanism where authors—like myself—can share a list of the authors we follow. In other words, you find what you like and the only 'system’ that suggests what posts to read is word of mouth. That’s the old web—before the AIs took over and started to promote anger and fear.
It’s extremely simple to sign up. All you have to do is give it your email address. If you’d like to get a paid subscription, I’m not going to turn it down. But if you can’t afford to pay for one, that’s fine because I let everyone read for free. I’m not the only one who does this, and almost everyone with a paywall posts the occasionally free post too.
In addition, there are no advertisements—anywhere.
If you don’t subscribe, I suspect that the day is coming (if it hasn’t already) when a significant fraction of my readership will simply no longer see the links I post. (Twitter has already played around with doing this, but backed-down shortly afterward people complained.) That’s because I can’t afford to pay for either adverts or a company to ‘spoof’ the AI that sorts people’s feeds—and I wouldn’t want to do it, anyway.
Substack Notes
As for the problem of finding a social media that isn’t playing games with what you see on your feed, there’s a new player in town. Substack has started up a system called Substack Notes that is specifically geared towards people who read and subscribe to Substacks. It can be easily used from either a web-browser or as an app on your phone or tablet.
It has two different feeds—one that shows posts and replies from the entire Substack Universe, and, another that just shows what people that subscribe to the same Substacks as you are saying. This helps people get a feel for what else is going on in the Substack universe and can help you navigate the huge number of people writing on line.
I haven’t mentioned it to subscribers up until now, because I wanted my readers at large to know that this thing exists and have an opportunity to subscribe before I make the suggestion.
A Face-to-Face Get Together
I’ve had several readers contact me directly and had face-to-face meetings over coffee. (I also had a personal Zoom chat from another continent.) It seems logical that if a few are motivated in doing this to the point of reaching out, more would be interested if I suggested it.
I’ve been holding off on this because of the plague. But COVID seems to have finally calmed-down to the point where I think it’s time to see if people are interested in a face-to-face. Obviously I can’t do this for all my subscribers—many of whom live out-of-town if not out-of-country, but there are still a fair number here in Guelph, so I thought I’d run this flag up the pole and see if anyone salutes it.
This will give me a chance to get some feel for who is reading my stuff, what they like, what they don’t like, and, what they’d like me to write about in the future. And, to be honest, sitting in front of a computer for hours can be kinda lonely, so any excuse to meet new people sounds like a good thing to me.
To that end, I’ve created a Survey Monkey questionnaire just to see how much interest there might be and what would be the best venue to hold such a meeting. Here’s the link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2VTZ397
If there is enough interest, I’ll set a time and place, ask for reservations, reserve the necessary seating, and, hope to meet some folks to share ideas.