I NEED to get chubbier

I've been thinking a lot about posts on here and elsewhere about "moving to a new site" in regards to Twitter's downfall. And while that used to be a common thing in the past, to move from site to site, it's not as common anymore. And I don't think you can go back to that era of the internet unless you are willing to get a lot of people making sites that people wanna go to.

When I was between the ages of Middle School and High School (I graduated in 2012, if that helps) I was on a Whose Line message board, various gaming message boards, various podcast message boards, the Meez message boards, IRC chats on occasion, Myspace, Google+, Facebook, Reddit, and probably many more places I'm forgetting at the moment. There were websites aplenty, and they were easy to find. You had a hobby or interest you liked, you could find a board, then find more from the people who posted there, and so on and so on. Services like StumbleUpon could also get you to some new places you'd never been before, and that's one more vector of discoverability into a bunch of cool websites and places to hang.

Now, in 2024, where on the net do those places exist? I could go back to some of those old message boards, but most of them are dead if they still exist at all or I've grown out of the community¹. Some people have made throwback websites, like SpaceHey, and some people have made cool little websites in general, but it's not like people are rushing to go back to them. Where are all the users, and can you convince your friends to check in on them? Even though I follow Some Cool People on here, I still couldn't tell you of alternatives to Twitter outside of Bluesky (bleh) and Mastadon (even more bleh).

Which kinda gets me to my larger point, which is who's making sites like that anymore? Who's making message boards? Who's making other social media sites? That shit costs time and money, and while they're fun little projects a lot of the time (let me show you my list of ProBoards message boards sometimes) they will more often than not lose steam or interest rather quickly (RIP my message board I made with the help of Tumblr). It doesn't feel like new sites are really happening, and most that manage to happen feel like fly-by-night operations.

There's lots of talk about diversifying and getting setup on a bunch of different sites, but... where? What sites or platforms exist? Are we going back to forums? Which ones? Is there a different social media site that scratches the Twitter itch that you really like? Be specific, talk them up.

Like, even in the wake of Twitter's downfall, there's three "replacements" as far as I can tell: Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads. Which one are you moving to? Threads at least has the support of the new @midnight reboot After Midnight, but what's Bluesky and Mastodon got going for it at this point? Bluesky's got the blocked user high score list and Mastodon seems to be built around in-fighting and declaring other instances are ontological evil so good luck picking the "right" instance. And even if we don't get into my issues with a lot of these also-rans in Twitter's wake, where exactly are we going?

And that's just thinking about Twitter! What about a Tumblr replacement (I guess I'm already here, so ignore this one), a DeviantArt replacement, a Facebook replacement, an Art Fight replacement, and on and on and on and on and on.

I'm down to sign up for new sites and give things a shot. I'd love to be fully off of twitter, I'd love to look at Discord a little less, I'd love to have a new username and password to use somewhere. But where are you going? What's the site or sites you're going to?

And, more importantly, where are we going? Who are you going to convince to follow you to the new sites, whatever they may be? I made my migration from Facebook to Google+ back in high school, but that didn't matter when none of my friends did. If you can't convince people to join you, or you don't talk up the new place, then what's the point of wondering why people don't move to new sites anymore. We know the reason at that point.

1. Talking about you, 4-day-a-week nerd podcast that definitely taught me some unhealthy and toxic nerd habits that I had to unlearn as I grew up! I checked back in on that message board and podcast recently and I'm glad I'm gone lmao.

As I continue to diversify my online presence, and see people talking about leaving other sites, I keep coming back to this.

I'm not sure if anyone needs to know this, but charred paper tastes better than uncharred paper. However, with charred paper, you do run the risk of the paper flying away, or if you hold the paper, the risk of panicking about holding something on fire and dropping the paper.