I appreciate the commitment to no algorithms and not chasing metrics and engagement on here but uh, I think I do want some amount of discoverability because as it stands I feel like I'm just in a void until I can find enough people to follow.
Like, maybe I am twitter poisoned, but I would like to see who follows my friends because I know some people I know should be in there, or be able to search words in posts instead of just tags, and I know like counts are evil but I still kinda wanna know I'm not speaking to the void, or sort through tags and find things lots found interesting and not what day I happened to search the tag. Its not all a money pursuit, there is a certain utility to these things which people do desire, and because they do it got monetized.
Well, I never used tumblr, maybe I just need to give it time to fill up in here, and get used to depending on tags, and divorce myself of these mindsets and expectations that all social media ingrained on me.
But at a certain point its like, yea, the addictive element is the problem, but if I'm not here for my high, why am I here? We all seek validation, maybe there's no real way around that, the problem being corporations and capitalism exploiting that, the outsized influence you can gain from a large platform, power dynamics and hierarchies; astronomically big, all encompassing issues.
In the utopia where all our needs are met and we help out each other, spending time scrolling on funny posts ought to be just as valid and harmless as any other pursuit.