thinking about how i've got an rss feed that's starting to fill up with some fascinating posts by ex-cohost people and also that one tweet(?) going around about how people want to feel like part of a community but they're made to be part of an audience
i don't actually mind being part of an audience, but even an audience participates. you share the experiences with the other audience members. your reactions are visible to each other and to those on stage. the relationship is one-sided but still symbiotic. how much will people miss that feeling when they're posting into the void?
this is one of the big problems with RSS. it's exactly half of a social media service. it does a great job distributing information but there's no way to respond back. no way to see other people's reactions.
speaking of which, if you're comfortable, please actually append a reply email or a link to a comment website to the bottom of your website posts! for email, you can try to minimise spam by "hiding" your email so spammy spiders can't find it. here's how I do it:
You can email me at crystal (at) this domain.
or alternatively, use another place that has comments. David Revoy for example has Mastodon comment integration, but even just a link to a Bluesky thread or Mastodon toot works for people to reply. if you're okay with ads (blegh), and your website is "Safe For Work", disqus gives free comment sections to websites. if you want to self-host, there's Remark42 too. If you want, you can even embed your mastodon feed using https://mastofeed.com/.
Tbh this problem has me leaning towards a blog software that's built on ActivityPub. Functionally, I'm not sure how different it is than simply having a Mastodon/AP comment section, but it has appeal. The main downside to me seems like it would be significantly more complicated than running a static blog, and posts with rich text might not be well-represented on the average client. But maybe that's a worthwhile trade-off?
