sovay: (Psholtii: in a bad mood)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2025-01-22 06:30 pm

Sometimes it's hard to remember that I loved the lives I lived before

Who knew that one of the reasons to appreciate DW not being the algorithmically slammed febrile chamber of FB would be that I can actually spend time on this platform without constantly having in my face the same photos of a man in need of a damnatio memoriae stat throwing an enthusiastically received Hitlergruß. I think of myself as possessing a reasonable tolerance for hateful language and gestures, since it is fairly impossible to survive in the world as currently constituted without one, but I could be doing several very different things with my life if I wanted to look at wall-to-wall Nazi salutes. I know that it happened. I have seen the responses and the responses to the responses and I have some responses of my own. Please get the outrage bait out of my eyeballs; it's got to take a number and stand in simultaneous line with all the rest of the corrosive Gish gallop, which actually if I hear one more person refer to the destruction of human rights as a distraction, get in that same line and load yourself into the sun.

Nonetheless, as people with whom it was my only regular medium of contact bleed off FB, I get to feel left behind once again. I am as unlikely to have an account on Bluesky as on original flavor Twitter for the same reason that its structure is terrible for my brain. I appear to have been wired by nature for exactly one form of internet communication and resent that I am supposed to accommodate to ones that make me feel like someone is treating my concentration as a pincushion. Discord is not congenial to me, either. Meanwhile I continue to hate the expectation that it is universally easier to extract information from videos or podcasts rather than written articles.

The original concept of the Etruscan saeculum is a valuable one, because it measures in historical memory: it ends with the death of the last person who was alive at the time of a crucial event, such as the founding of a city. Obviously I am trying not to feel that we are at the fraying end of one of these cycles, especially since Strauss–Howe generational theory appears to have run off a pseudoscientific and rather millenarian cliff with the notion.

To conclude on a not completely unhelpful note, Mamaleh's has had for some time a feature at their register where you can round up to the nearest dollar on an order, donating the difference in change to a charity of the restaurant's choosing. This month they went with the MIRA Coalition—Massachusetts Immigrant & Refugee Advocacy. The good news is that you can donate to them on your own time with or without a bagel or a milkshake or a 50/50, although I am obviously in support of the latter, too.
theseatheseatheopensea: Annabelle Hurst from Department S holding a book. (Annabelle.)

[personal profile] theseatheseatheopensea 2025-01-23 12:41 am (UTC)(link)
I appear to have been wired by nature for exactly one form of internet communication and resent that I am supposed to accommodate to ones that make me feel like someone is treating my concentration as a pincushion.

I feel this so much, and each time it happens (which sadly is a lot), I appreciate DW even more.

Also, yay for donating to charites and bagels and milkshakes! <3
imagine_that: (Default)

[personal profile] imagine_that 2025-01-23 12:49 am (UTC)(link)
This is still my favorite way to communicate on the internet. I wish I could persuade more friends to come back (or try it for the first time) so we could have a community here like back in LJ's heyday. It's so much more satisfying to write and read longform journaling.

And yes, not being bombarded with all those images here is a relief.
ride_4ever: (FK back you up)

[personal profile] ride_4ever 2025-01-23 12:50 am (UTC)(link)
I wish I had the skill to write comments to your posts that are as well-wrought as the posts themselves. Sometimes I don't even comment because I've read some post or other of yours that so fills my mind and heart I am beyond words with it. This one I'm commenting to say how less alone I feel when I read what you've said here about the social media platforms and the videos and the podcasts which are anywhere from "not congenial" to "terrible" for your brain...that is quite like my thoughts on those subjects (and yes, I also get that "left behind once again" feeling). It's LJ and DW which are perfectly suited to how my brain works. Thank you for sharing these thoughts which you have crafted so excellently.
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)

[personal profile] yhlee 2025-01-23 12:51 am (UTC)(link)
Trust me, I do use Bluesky because bored but you're not missing anything; one particular bungled feature (lack of guardrails) makes tge site unsustainably awful after a critical mass of total stranger followers, I predict it too will implode in six mos to a year if not faster.
yhlee: Alto clef and whole note (middle C). (Default)

[personal profile] yhlee 2025-01-23 12:59 am (UTC)(link)
also sympathies on the fucked social media hellscape i hate video info that could be plain text

sorry this is curt i am v sick

:support support:
asakiyume: (Aquaman is sad)

[personal profile] asakiyume 2025-01-23 01:01 am (UTC)(link)
Thanks for the link for MIRA.

So many things are so bad--yes, they need to take a number.

I very much liked seeing the clip of Mariann Edgar Budde speaking truth to power, though, while Mr. Constitution Shredder had to just sit there and listen. It was like the man in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square, but she's still standing.
princessofgeeks: (Default)

[personal profile] princessofgeeks 2025-01-23 01:12 am (UTC)(link)
I'm with you; no to the constantly streaming, small-bite kinds of internet communication, yes to Dreamwidth, no to Youtube, yes to text.
redbird: closeup of me drinking tea, in a friend's kitchen (Default)

[personal profile] redbird 2025-01-23 02:03 am (UTC)(link)
MIRA do good work. In the Before Times, I volunteered for a few of their new-citizen voter registration efforts. They resumed those efforts a couple of years ago, but I no longer feel up to volunteering.

I agree completely about wanting printed text, not video or podcasts, with few exceptions, mostly for how-to videos where being able to see what the instructor is doing, or look at the results. For example, I may benefit from seeing what someone means by a "low simmer," but I know what a bowl of soup or an ice cream cone looks like, and I need things like oven temperatures in text.

That said, I do somewhat better than you with some bits of Discord and Bluesky, though it occurs to me that I haven't looked at the latter in a couple of months.
kenjari: (Default)

[personal profile] kenjari 2025-01-23 02:44 am (UTC)(link)
Meanwhile I continue to hate the expectation that it is universally easier to extract information from videos or podcasts rather than written articles.
I feel very much the same. Especially for social and political analysis.
dewline: "Truth is still real" (anti-fascism)

[personal profile] dewline 2025-01-23 03:07 am (UTC)(link)
And of course, the Vulgarian reflexively demanded an apology for the sermon and begging.

Not going to happen, thankfully.
ethelmay: (Default)

[personal profile] ethelmay 2025-01-23 03:48 am (UTC)(link)
Video seems potentially useful in some instances, but in practice it always seems as if all the bits I want slow are too fast and vice versa.
gwynnega: (John Hurt penguin)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2025-01-23 03:49 am (UTC)(link)
I still have many friends on FB, and I am enjoying Bluesky...but I just find DW so relaxing by comparison.
thistleingrey: (Default)

[personal profile] thistleingrey 2025-01-23 04:42 am (UTC)(link)
*hugs*
I like DW and Bsky and former Twitter and Discord and Slack and Instagram and even (once in a while) TikTok for different purposes, but IMO this makes me a privileged consumer and has no bearing on what anyone else ought to suffer or put up with. One nice thing IMO about DW's it-takes-intentionality image upload interface is that people tend not to fling images like paint at a wall.
selkie: (Default)

[personal profile] selkie 2025-01-23 05:37 am (UTC)(link)
I'm just going to go shallow and say I'm tired of seeing it because he's fugly and his posture was appalling while he did it, and if he wanted to wave fascism through the open door he should have straightened his damn spine and committed to the bit.

Thank you for being in receipt of all the stupid, inconsequential letters I send you after I report the morning's horrors to agencies that have abandoned us, even while we shout the fight is here. I am not leaving social media because it is our best early warning system, but I want to stop communicating by it.

One of the things I like very much about you is how you don't change to fit time. IJS.

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