i haven't made a "here's where I'll be if twitter blows up" post. i'm still at the point where imagining a web without twitter seems unlikely, if only because there's gotta be another rich asshole (or several assholes) who would love to scoop up twitter's algorithm and user data on the cheap. More practically, having gone through multiple versions of platform migration, I know that these PSA-style notifications listing every single site you have an account on are mostly noise. I'm well aware that most people will just scroll by a post made up of links to empty profiles on websites they aren't already using, so I'm not inclined to make an annoucement no one will listen to.
Still, the ongoing train wreck of Musktwitter has raised the possiblity that twitter could just...die. The comparisions to "the last days of an MMO server" are pretty salient. Despite all the networking and contact information sharing that is happening now, and will continue in the coming weeks, the truth is that once a platform dies, losing contact with people you've interacted with daily is inevitable. This especially true of friends you make through hobbies and fandom--the experiences you share are so meaningful, so hard to find in meatspace, but they're fragile, too; easy to break and difficult to maintain once the place they first formed is gone.
That reality is what I'm wrestling with now. I've settled with the fact that, if twitter does disappear, I will not see or hear from most of my mutuals again--I'm not happy, but I can live with it. And I'm incredibly glad for the friends who have reached out to me and made connections on other platforms; I'm not worried in those cases.
But there are people who I've met and interact with exclusively through twitter, and if it goes, so does my contact with them. Imagining that hurts, sometimes to the point of tears. I don't want to lose contact with these people, but I also know the chances of us meeting elsewhere is slim. Repeatedly mentioning my other socials won't help, either--I'm not on all that many in the first place, and neither are they.
I'm not sure what to do to avoid losing touch with these people. I've thought about reaching out in DMs to invite them to follow me here, but even if I get over the crippling anxiety of earnestly reaching out to say "I value your presence THIS MUCH"... there's the practical matter of inviting them to wait in line. (I know there's not much to be done about the queue rn, but it's hard to sell people on a new site by saying "you'll love the posting options...after waiting a week or two to experience them" lol)
In the end, I don't really know what I want to do about the anxiety I'm experiencing right now. It just feels better seeing it writing, even if its messy and convoluted and there's no foolproof solution for avoiding the end of internet friendships. :(