Internet fresh air

I’m liking the Fediverse a lot.

Things like this Hank Green video reinforce that. (And they don’t even know about it! Everything Hank and so many others claim to miss about the internet loves on, but it doesn’t have a slick corporate logo so they don’t acknowledge it’s there. Or something.)

I’ve often thought, you know, not all algorithms are bad. You could have good algorithms. TikTok felt like it did for a bit, even! Like, I learned about a lot of stuff there.

But taking a step back feels like a big breath of fresh air. To not think about engagement.

I love finding things, I love encountering new stuff and ideas. It turns out, you don’t need an algorithm to do that! You can just listen to individual people share the things they think are cool. The masses don’t intrinsically share more interesting stuff, it’s all kind of arbitrary anyways.

It’s nice to not know what “everyone” is talking about. To not keep up with the informational Joneses. To find some people in the world to care about and appreciate and keep up with what they’re doing, instead of the endlessly shifting, shouting voices of an infinite faceless chorus. To decide that, if the content firehose is overwhelming, you can just turn the knob down and save yourself the root rot.

I dunno. I know it’s far from perfect, but it’s the most I’ve ever enjoyed “social media” so far. And I hope I can give back in some way to make it feel like that for other people, too.