In the last days of October 2022 Elon Musk finalised his acquisition of Twitter, walked in to the lobby carrying a kitchen sink, and posted “let that sink in”. For me, Twitter was over. I backed up my twitter archive, used TweetDelete to remove my history going back to early 2007, and walked away.
I’ve been somewhat digitally homeless since, so today is the launch of a wild new concept. A personal Home Page that will be the home of my online presence and content.
Yes, I am being sarcastic, yes, I realise this is a very old idea. The fact that you have to clarify a statement like that so you don’t have a swarm of replies pointing out that this existed 25 years ago is part of the problem.
I’ll get back to that. But first, somewhat of a wordy manifesto.
I’ve been very online for a very long time.
I’ve had number of attempts at blogging, mostly at this domain name, with different areas of focus. I’ve never really stuck at it for too long. Often my focus area changed, or I was just uncomfortable with the quality of my writing (I still am), and I’ve not felt fully committed to it, and usually ended up with a small collection of posts I didn’t like, so I’ve deleted and started again.
I joined Twitter in March 2007. It was only a few months old at that point. It was limited to 140 characters, and one of the main ways people interacted it was via a text message. Yes, you got a text message every time somebody Tweeted.
It was an exciting time, and I made new local friends who would post about mundane things like what they were having for lunch. It was a pioneering phase of the internet, and people thought you were weird for being into it.
I loved it.
Over the years it gained mainstream acceptance, “brands” began to dominate, along with tedious politicians and lackey journalists, all repeating party lines. And then the hustle bro entrepreneurs trying to sell courses with engagement bait Tweet threads 👇 🧵 to build their brand (Yes, I realise the irony, I sell courses. I just could ever stomach this technique though).
The fun definitely left it for me, so I wasn’t too sad to pack up at the end of 2022 and leave. I did miss there being one universal hub of all the conversations I was interested in though. And like a lot of other people I started looking for a replacement.
So what are the options?
It’s not really a replacement, but I deleted my account mid 2020 with the realisation the algorithm was specifically designed to bait people into arguments. At the time, the Black Lives Matter movement and associated riots showed how many people in my acquaintance circles were awful closeted racists. Any time I was spending there was just making me angry. It was time to go.
Mastodon
I’ve been on Mastodon since 2016 or so, when it was an unhinged free for all. After October 2022, every misstep Twitter made triggered another influx of people to Mastodon, and another wave of people spending a lot of time telling people how they should Mastodon, while also scolding people for saying anything critical about Mastodon. I find it entirely tedious most of the time. It’s the home of “Well actually”.
Threads
I was a very early adopter of Threads, and I want to like it. But again, Meta’s algorithm makes it awful a lot of the time. In the earlier days of it you were presented with people with common interests. I’ve connected with an amazing group of musicians and composers there. It also promoted people posting ridiculous hot takes or long anecdotes. So of course people game that system. It’s a daily onslaught of the most ridiculous nonsense.
Every now and then you post something intended for people with common interests and it gets picked up and shown to thousands, you you find yourself open to drive by opinions by the worst people, entirely lacking context, thinking you’re looking for their take.
The mindset is that this is a “Town Square” where any idea is in the open and subject to debate.
Can you imagine having a conversation with a friend in an open area and having some random sea lion interject and tell you how we’re wrong? I could see a lot of punches being thrown in town squares if that happened.
Bluesky
I was also an early adopter of Bluesky, I’m even a Certified Bluesy Elder (IYKYK), and I want to like it a lot more. Bluesky’s early days were full of excitement and enthusiasm. It felt a lot like the very early days of Twitter, with the core team trying to build out the infrastructure and features as it went along. However Bluesky has a weird quirk where a lot of the early popular members got a little caught up in the party and one by one disgraced themselves and got run out of town. 18 months on, a lot of people are unable to let go of some of the grudges and a whole lore has formed. I took a long break from Bluesky, and every time I check back you don’t have to scratch too far below the surface to find old wounds still talked about (and wildly misrepresented).
Not exactly like the others, but I’ve loved Instagram. I have two accounts. One for my personal stuff, bikes, road trips, coffee, cooking, family life, and memes and shitposts. I have another one where I’ve kept a journal of coffees I’ve tried and liked. The thing with Instagram is you’re at the whims of an algorithm. What used to get shown to all your friends can now be missed by most, and we’re all desensitised by all the promoted content we get forced to look at. While I’m not a slave to the number of likes a post gets, it’s nice to know you’re being seen.
So about blogs
A lot of people I like and respect have been publicly pining the loss of the old days of blogs and starting again. Others, like my friend Fernando have never stopped writing online, and I think he’s got the right idea.
The AI enshittification of everything and the death of search has threatened the discoverable nature of blogs too. But at least it’s a home, an identity, a place to put your full thoughts with all the context that is likely to be missed in a short post.
Plus, and this is the biggest thing, it’s a permanent place for your identity and your thoughts, at a domain you control.
Twitter was bought by a narcissistic, racist buffoon and ruined, we can’t trust Meta with anything, a Mastodon instance can disappear, and who knows what will happen with Bluesky.
Having a place to anchor our ideas just makes sense, and we can use any of the other text based social networks as what they’ve proven to be, temporary places.
As Scott Hanselman has said on multiple occasions, “Own your words”.
My site
I said before I’ve not stuck with having a blog because my focus area changes too much. I’ve never felt comfortable bringing “my whole self” to one place. I have my professional side software development consultant and do training, but I also have other sides, I have quirky humour, I ride bikes - sometimes very seriously, I play music, I am a home barista, I like doing road trips and capturing photos.
I do lots of things. I always felt that it didn’t work in the one place. So I’d separate different aspects of my life to different mediums, but that’s not working so well either.
So I’ve decided to pull it all back here.
So this site has what i am doing to build my solo consulting business, what i am doing to promote my software architecture training, but I’m also creating space to just post whatever thoughts and musings i have, I am going to post stuff that is just happening in my life. I’ll move my posts about coffee here. I have some other creative projects in the works and they’ll be here too.
It’s an experiment, and I may abandon it, but for me, the concept of this being my personal home page feels right again.
