i can't go to hell - i'm all out of vacation days. i watch space rocks and yell at computers for my day job. probably too old for any of this

 

i think i might be burned out on internet social. it's hard to keep doing it. it's hard to even maintain the amount of attention i'm already giving it

 

i am the cause of most of my own problems

 

furthermore, capitalism must be destroyed

 

birdsona: ?????

 

🌎 Ontario, Canada


webbed site
egrets.ca/

so that creep from pillowfort is still doing its thing

as previously seen here, here, here.... im not in the business of indexing every single one of a user's posts (and frankly do not have the brain energy to do so) so you can just track it down on the pillowfort cohost tag if you want to

anyway, this time it's about the influx of tumblr users

i dont even disagree with all of its observations all of the time, and certainly there is value of analyzing and thinking about how we use services to socialize, and how the design of those mediums influences how that happens

but the way it approaches these threads like some kind of wildlife documentary studying and reporting on us like some kinda rare exotic animals, or players in its little character drama, and the way pillowfort users seemingly follow in fascination, without most involved parties ever actually participating here, feels intrusive and extremely voyeuristic

i also believe its presentation of these posts in a neutral, purportedly objective (again, "documentarian") tone is misleading - while it's impossible to say what's going on in another person's head, the way it talks about the site suggests, to me, that it has a negative bias. and while that's perfectly fine (i certainly do not like every platform out there), it's at odds with how it presents these posts

furthermore, i do not believe that it is at all qualified to comment on any part of this site's culture, only lurking here and never engaging with anyone except when trying to dig up drama to report on

its account here is @osteophage

i suggest you block it if any of this rubs you the wrong way. if it is indeed operating in good faith, i trust that it would not evade blocks to engage in further "reporting" against your will


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in reply to @SomeEgrets's post:

i pretty much 100% agree with the tumblr post, it's valid criticism & some of the "posts from cohost users in response" are so fucking salty ("i don't want to hear complaints"-- really??)

i feel like this kind of stuff is healthy, in part because it's a good collection of opinions from folks and in part because it keeps folks who really don't fit here off the site.

but man, i wish talking to people would be easier on here.

yeah i generally believe people are being honest when they talk about friction setting up here

sometimes it's just a values mismatch; people who really want metrics are not going to have a good time on the webbed site designed to not have metrics

but things like "i just got here and don't have an existing network of people to branch out from?" i do believe they're being genuine about a problem they're having

i have no idea what the answer is, because a lot of the time, the go-to is "just do what the website i came from did"1 and oh my god am i too perpetually exhausted to figure out how to build a social media site, even if i worked in web tech at all (i do not)


  1. i still feel this way about a couple twitter features myself, in spite of how much of a hellhole that place turned into, but c'est la vie

So, the only actual discovery feature is the thing at the bottom that says I should go follow the founders. If I was coming here de novo, I suppose I would do that and then end up following people they rebug. Or not? They might not rebug a single thing I like, and then I'm stuck, and maybe I think to search for some tags of cough fandoms and then probably I have a reasonable starting point from there.

Now that isn't the case, I literally made an account to send an ask to a dev who I've been following for more than ten years on twitter and who is part of the cohost founding clique tm and so my experience was basically seeing all the people from 2012 or so twitter again plus people from discord and going from there, but I can see how being canalized into just liking what the founders like can feel very shallow

edit: I wonder if one of those big stupid word clouds you get when you join a dating website where it just throws 100 interests at you and says hey pick five would be a good idea

but things like "i just got here and don't have an existing network of people to branch out from?" i do believe they're being genuine about a problem they're having

i've been here for a While and I still am mostly just stuck inside the same bubble. there's whole other crowds of folks on here that i will never interact with simply because I can't just brownian motion bump into them.

like, even on twitter it's much easier to do that. go through the folks your mutual follows, find things that interest you both- can't do that here. even if i'd like to make my follows public.

i think this is kind of an interesing clash of use cases, because that way of using a site feels utterly alien and unmanageable to me!

i only ever followed like max 100 people on twitter. everyone is someone i'm familiar with or kind of directly adjacent to a social circle because i'm a "small groups" person and i'm not really interested with following the widest swath of the internet possible (in fact, i find going above a small group quite overwhelming!)

so to me, a smallish, stable group of people i mostly know is what i'm looking for!

but there are definitely people who collected follows of like 5000 people and are always actively looking to grow that, and i think we want very different things!

don't have an answer here that'll make everyone happy or anything, but it's something i've noted and been pondering

i think going through and cataloguing peoples discussions and thoughts when told by these same people to fuck off or evading a block to do so is a perfectly normal and reason to call someone a creep, especially if that's the only reason they use this site.

i think in the interest of fairness, i have to note that i cant state that it has evaded a block. i'd have noted if it did that to me, but i don't know who's on anyone else's block list, so that's specifically not a claim i can make

(and if i did, i'm still not sure it would be okay to divulge someone else's blocks without their permission first)

thought i typed "potentially evading" there, yeah. also, can't help but notice links to new users' posts don't have their names next to them even if they're far more recognizable than the "established cohost users" down below that do.

i specifically find the way it methodically catalogues people's posts about disagreements on this site (and only the disagreements) and presents them in a voyeuristic onlooker way that treats people from a community it never directly interacts with as a sort of almost-entertainment, offsite, where the subjects of its posts don't really have a voice to object, if they're even aware they're being watched really, really offputting

it would be one thing if it was in conversation with users of this site at all and seemingly interested in discussion about the shortfalls of our design (and like i noted, there are several valid observstions! i don't disagree with some of the conclusions)

the only time i've seen it interacting with users here is specifically in the threads it's reporting on, trying to push people to provide links it can use in its post - which, again, i just find pretty offputting behaviour

it's like the website equivalent of following someone around on campus and recording them so you can send the videos to your buddies later to analyze how they're hanging out with their friends?

it doesn't help that the only other time i've encountered people cataloguing other people's daily interactions at a distance and reporting them to an audience like this has been harassment forums. i know someone i trust who vouches that this person isn't doing this, so i don't believe its intentions are bad, but that it's being done at all still makes me want to keep it at a distance and not cross into my social spaces

idk why this creeps me out so bad. i guess because they're a stranger? like they only use cohost to post about us to their audience elsewhere. i feel like some of those insights are useful but they are very specifically not posting them here, simply rubbernecking for a different crowd. it's weird as hell.

Maybe the fact that it so clearly seems to be done in bad faith? The post that got them caught the last time was literally just about stirring up shit and drama about "those crazy cohost people" like it's r/tumblrInAction.

Oh, and that some of the "drama" they were "reporting" on was shit they stirred up themselves. Painting yourself as some impartial observer rings a little hollow when you're deliberately provoking people to get a reaction.

That's not "reporting", that's paparazzing.

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