Getting off META et al and how to do it

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Where have you been? What do you desire?

Every time I hear praise for MySpace, ironic or not, I just think "Oh yeah, right, the site that Rupert Murdoch bought."

Makeoutclub can remain in the deep dark past.

Billionaires really need to stop buying out websites

I just think "Oh yeah, right, the site that Rupert Murdoch bought."

I thought it was Justin Timberlake

relationship status: it's complicated
looking for: random play

My fb feed is 90% junk, it's the Platonic ideal of enshitification. No doubt there are things I could do to improve it, but they don't make it easy and I can't be bothered, so I rarely look at it. In bluesky they managed to make a copy of twitter (largely) without the enshitifying bullshit, why has no one tried to do this with facebook?

But what did people do before Instagram and Tik Tok?

The sad thing is, in terms of cultural promotion (music, performance, etc.), it was the alt-weekly that every non-driver would read on their commute to and from work. Or in their bathroom.

I feel like the next step is no longer trying to reach the world (culturally) or communicate with the entire world (through social media), but being more content with the communities we're in, physically and digitally.

Re: what people did before, I'd be lying if I said that the jump from blogging to posting on facebook didn't result in far more people reading me - you just get this instant audience of friends, they don't even have to click away from the site, but even if you're just linking to your work elsewhere it's useful to get the word out. Progressively less so as audiences leave ofc, but as curmudgeon pointed out there's huge swathes of niches that are ignorant of #discourse and just calmly posting as they always do.

I don't know what the solution is and certainly major props to anyone trying to get something off the ground w/o meta.

re events, I went from finding out about events via last.fm until they destroyed that in about 2016, since then Facebook was the best way to find about them, but I would agree that that's been moving more to Instagram over the last few years. there's a lot that don't appear on FB now

Bring back sex worker ads and alt weeklies will be solvent again.

As terrible as Reddit is (and I don’t just mean ownership/politics, the upvote/downvote system and being actively hostile to ongoing discussion by design) at least it is occupied by real people and has the capacity to host a sub forum for every city and every micro-scene in every city.

Re: what people did before, I'd be lying if I said that the jump from blogging to posting on facebook didn't result in far more people reading me

Honest question, because self-promotion (not in a bad way!) is not a necessary part of my life, but what does the "more people" metric ultimately mean? Does that mean measurably more people *actually* buying/attending/watching/reading, which results in more income or whatever, or just "more," as in the potential for more buying/attending/watching/reading, etc.? Does losing part of your follower base result in actual loss of engagement/income/whatever, or just potential loss?

For example, I've seen people wringing their hands over leaving twitter and leaving behind their follower numbers, but what does that actually portend? What does, say, leaving behind 25K followers mean, practically speaking? Strictly a smaller audience and therefore less engagement and potential income/"success"? What does more people reading translate to, in real terms? Because the reason I prompted discussion of "before" is that before social media, concerts still sold out, products and stuff were sold, events happened: screenings, exhibitions, readings. Is that all just because hard listings existed, in papers and weeklies and whatnot, and that's how you got the word out if you had something to promote?

Again, being somewhat rhetorical, because that's certainly how I learned about shows and stuff, from newspapers and the like. But then, that's just a space to hang your flyer, so to speak. If any of you that use social media for promotion just shifted to, say, an emailed (or physical!) newsletter, would that demonstrably cost you warm bodies/income?

Thankfuklly I do not rely on creative endeavours for money so can't comment on that aspect of it. It meant people commenting on my posts (usually on facebook even if they're commenting on stuff from elsewhere but hey, they read it) and ppl finding out about my stuff that otherwise wouldn't have. Blogging by comparison was mostly shouting into the void, you have to tell ppl about it one by one and 99% of ppl won't read it anyway.

It seems self evident to me that the audience of a newsletter would be way smaller, it requires the initiative to sign up for it and then the initiative to open every e-mail, FB you just have to click on one link.

Strictly a smaller audience and therefore less engagement and potential income/"success"? What does more people reading translate to, in real terms?

What are "real terms"? My objective is for people to read or listen to my stuff, those are already the real terms. Not that I'd ever aim for or want 25k readers, the difference between social media and newsletter is more like the difference between having 20 readers and having two.

I feel like the next step is no longer trying to reach the world (culturally) or communicate with the entire world (through social media), but being more content with the communities we're in, physically and digitally.

I don't think that toothpaste can be put back in the tube. Idk I guess it could be enforced on us if all the options get so bad that younger and more media savvy people back away from them in huge waves, but people will find something else. Sometimes the communities we're in are the problem.

in orbit makes a good point. Social media (like the internet generally)
serves different purposes for different people. Some folks are glad that it reconnected them to Aunt Martha; others glad that they could finally get away from Aunt Martha. Her couch smelled weird anyways.

It's an elephant with poky bits and ropy bits

I think the elephant is very much like something that sat on our society and crushed everything that came before it.

What are "real terms"? My objective is for people to read or listen to my stuff, those are already the real terms.

What I mean by "real terms" is actual real world expectations from results, like money or sales. Obviously if someone was being *compensated* based on views/sales/listens, etc., then the number of people engaged is important. But if the goal is simply to get people to read or listen without expectation of compensation, as, say, an amateur or hobbyist (not saying you are!), then it doesn't really matter if it's one person or a million, right? So specifically if you're talking about a newsletter potentially costing you 18 out of 20 readers, that's not *actually* costing you or losing anything but ego, right? Unless you *need* rather than want those readers to do something more than read (ie buy or listen to what you're writing about). For example, I would love for people to watch the Brian Eno livestream I'm going to dip in and out of today, but if they don't, that doesn't affect me at all. But it does affect the filmmaker.

The social aspect of social media is self evident. That is, if I want to stay on Facebook strictly to share with my Aunt Martha what I thought of the new Jamie Foxx movie on Netflix, that's pretty casual, a conversation (like ILX). But if I want to promote my new movie with Jamie Foxx, that means getting that information to a large audience that will in turn spend money (or time as money) on my product.

We have a signal group here for underground shows … but it’s maxed out at a certain # of people.

I spent about 20 years organizing and promoting shows, and I am glad I don’t have to navigate this mess in that capacity anymore.

However, I now have work that involves advocacy and community outreach on at times complex issues… and idk … I never did twitter, it’s too much of a time suck … fbook was actually decent for some discussion… insta required making everything a meme, which was great if the content lent itself too that … but last fall I would get annoyed every week when other orgs doing outreach for the same mission made misleading/inaccurate memes or missed crucial points they could have made, and it was awkward.

Hardcore - Yabbut for lots of people "what came before it" sucked.

We didn't spring from a communitarian utopia to the present mess.

I remember lots of atomization and alienation and loneliness pre-Internet. It wasn't Mayberry. In the 1970s I traveled between my mom's house and my dad's house in an airplane.

And the initial reaction of some people to usenet or BBSes or heck, even aol was "yay! Finally a community!"

By the time I actually had internet, I had physically moved somewhere to have a community… idk … maybe I just need to make better memes

Definitely. It's possible that the internet saved my life; it definitely changed it in incredibly positive ways.

We still use a private fb group for one of my community aid projects, that's where the people are. We also use emails and Google voice texts but Goog doesn't WANT you to use any of their services for mass communication so emails and texts are limited, not very useful for our database of 1400 users.

In orbit … you should look into mail merge add-ons for google …

Basically if you have yr database in a google sheet it’s super easy, and it’s cheaper than a lot of newsletter software services

i check my IG on desktop for messages once a week, but have removed it from my phone. i am reading and watching and writing more.

i only still have a facebook b/c i enjoy the ‘memories’ feature. otherwise it is dead to me.

honestly, while i will probably have to get back on the train if i end up having to promote a book sometime in the near future, at this point i am not going to use IG for anything. 2025 is my cleanse year, and i am feeling good about it.

So specifically if you're talking about a newsletter potentially costing you 18 out of 20 readers, that's not *actually* costing you or losing anything but ego, right? Unless you *need* rather than want those readers to do something more than read (ie buy or listen to what you're writing about).

I think that's a very sad way of looking at the world, to be honest. Financial recompense is not the only thing that matters, and preferring to have 20 listeners rather than two is not just about "ego", the impulse to share things is not just about making yourself feel good (though obviously that's part of it). I would want the maximum amount of people who I think would be interested in whatever I do to know about it, and as I said since I tend to write about rather esoteric stuff and am not at this point interested in making this my regular grind that doesn't mean I want millions of readers. Sure this is partially about how it feels nice to have someone say "hey really enjoyed this" (which you might get every once in a while if you have 20 readers, zero if you have two, in my experience) but it's also about those extra readers/listeners having their own thoughts and reactions that will in possibly make my work better etc.

No, I totally get it. I feel the same way. I was just trying to be objective in the context of the thread. That is, if someone relies on social media to promote anything essential to their livelihood, putting food on the table for yourself or someone else, it would indeed be a pretty frustrating or frightening burden faced with the prospect of finding an alternative. Just saying - and this is similar to the twitted embeds discussions - that if one does have a moral or ethical objection to a social media platform and there's nothing really at stake by not using it, then it's pretty easy to not use it. I brought up the semi-hypothetical 25k followers on twitter example because there are/were, for example, artists I follow(ed) that relied on their audience to make a living (sales), there's something concrete at stake, and abandoning or switching to a platform would mean rebuilding that vital audience/base from the ground up. As opposed to someone that, say, posts cute cate videos. Unless they are making essential bank from those cat videos, maybe they are.

Cat videos def one of the most profitable grinds on the internet rn!

Yeah, that was a bad example, lol.

In orbit … you should look into mail merge add-ons for google …

― sarahell, Friday, January 24, 2025 3:29 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Basically if you have yr database in a google sheet it’s super easy, and it’s cheaper than a lot of newsletter software services

― sarahell, Friday, January 24, 2025 3:31 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter but our database is now in Airtable because someone offered to build us a custom system!

We just gave up on sending out a newsletter which I think has been harmful to our work, but we don't have someone volunteering to report and write and design and publish a newsletter anyway so

For example, I've seen people wringing their hands over leaving twitter and leaving behind their follower numbers, but what does that actually portend? What does, say, leaving behind 25K followers mean, practically speaking? Strictly a smaller audience and therefore less engagement and potential income/"success"? What does more people reading translate to, in real terms? Because the reason I prompted discussion of "before" is that before social media, concerts still sold out, products and stuff were sold, events happened: screenings, exhibitions, readings. Is that all just because hard listings existed, in papers and weeklies and whatnot, and that's how you got the word out if you had something to promote?

I had about 5000 followers on Twitter before I dumped it. (I made my account private and logged out; I have not deleted my account, because I don't want someone else taking my username.) I have about half that many on Bluesky, but the quality of conversation is much better. More people like my posts, I get replies that are worth reading, etc.

I use Bluesky to promote my newsletter (which has about 4200 subscribers, fewer than 100 of whom pay for it) and my record label. When I started the label, one of our first releases attracted some press attention, and I told a writer for the New York Times that since we only made 500 physical copies of it, it was up to me to find those 500 people. To date I have not been able to do that; I have hundreds of unsold copies of each of the 10 CDs we've put out since 2021, including that one. Now, I don't usually hire PR (I did once, and it achieved nothing), or buy advertising, so social media and the newsletter are the ways I let people know about new releases. And they don't seem to do much, honestly.

Ha, I was literally about post this!!!!!--> I guess I'd love to hear from someone like unperson, who iirc runs a record label and writes books (so concrete products to be promoted and sold) but also writes a newsletter (which is more personal), about the pros and cons of social media, what works, what doesn't, etc.

I guess my conclusion would be (and this is something I've seen, like, bestselling authors say) that social media is not good for sales but is very good for branding. It allows people to get a sense of you, and if they like that version of you, maybe they'll buy your stuff. But you might have to mention that you have stuff for sale 20 times before it sinks in with one person.

Many editors want people they’re interested in hiring or working with to have lots of followers, or a certain amount of verified followers, on Twitter or on Instagram. Just about the only arts/media people who can stay off social media already have enough cultural capital.

that first thing i wrote last year on Medium got the most views/reads and this is the rundown:

External referrals
93%

email, IM, and direct

918

facebook.com

660

twitter.com

531

ilxor.com

398

bsky.app

108

instagram.com

74

google.com

49

losslessbored.com

7

mail.google.com

4

getpocket.com

2

All other external referrals

7

My conclusion: Just pay Ned to put something on his Facebook and you will get eyeballs. Its better than paying Google!

_In orbit … you should look into mail merge add-ons for google …

― sarahell, Friday, January 24, 2025 3:29 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Basically if you have yr database in a google sheet it’s super easy, and it’s cheaper than a lot of newsletter software services

― sarahell, Friday, January 24, 2025 3:31 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink_


I would like to subscribe to your newsletter but our database is now in Airtable because someone offered to build us a custom system!

Many editors want people they’re interested in hiring or working with to have lots of followers, or a certain amount of verified followers, on Twitter or on Instagram. Just about the only arts/media people who can stay off social media already have enough cultural capital.

but is there a direct demonstrable relationship between eyeballs and results, or only a presumption?

I always nuke/mark ‘not interested’ those topics and groups that I find déclassé, whatever social channel I’m on. It does improve my timeline.

this has not worked for me at all. it regularly re-serves me content i told it i'm not interested in. i still have this shit habit of checking in on FB a few times a day and most time the first things i see are garbage suggestions and clicking "not interested" or even blocking etc is getting too time consuming (on top of not working). anyways i ditched the app a while ago and just check it via browser, but really need to quit the habit of opening the fucking thing at all. can just email my mom pictures and vids of her grandkids and share my dumb thoughts on bluesky

xp No it's a good question. I would say...if you don't have a communication channel, assuming your project needs to be able to connect and share information with a wide range of people and not just a chosen few--if you don't have eyeballs, you can't have results. The former doesn't guarantee the latter however.

Thermo, you have to also keep selecting the Friends option to minimise all the infra digital groups but if you’ve got hunnis/wine moms in your friendship group you might see things like Aunty Acid memes, and if some of your male friends are also basic, you’ll see the dumb groups they have joined. If there are chuds in your friends list, you’ll see toxic nostalgia groups and tons of AI shite. Curate accordingly.

"toxic nostalgia groups"

lol I love this

totally nails the vibe

the key is to not despise your friends

Tends to be relatives who are basically huns/chuds in my case, but all the old ravers that’ve wormholed towards conspiracy psychosis are easily unfriended or snoozed; same goes for transphobes (more common than homophobes on my socials). Also, if you argue with anyone in those categories, the algorithm serves you right (wing).

Even when we are careful, they still serve us dumb shit. If you join groups (I’m in school/hometown/university groups, a big food group or two, some UK journalism and ‘scene’ groups, and a couple of whippet groups) you’ll also see the stupid affiliations chosen by members of said groups on your timeline. I hit not interested/irrelevant a few times each time I visit my profiles, and I think it does help in the long run.

thanks - i had no idea i had that option for my feed. still going to try to be on it less, but this will make things less awful for sure