Tag: social-media

I Hate When it Hits Home

I saw a headline this morning that pissed me off and scared the crap out of me, but I haven’t been able to verify it yet (and I almost don’t want to even try, in the spirit of burying my head in the sand). It said that trump mentioned including pharmaceuticals in his tariff bullshit.

That’s scary shit. Where is my step son’s insulin manufactured? Where is the company that manufactures it based? Is the already insultingly high price of insulin about to go up? Is it manufactured in china? Will the price go up 104%?

Like I said, I have not verified this report yet. I tried looking online for about four seconds and then stopped. Think of it as a no-news-is-good-news kinda thing, you know?

Further thoughts on being in the spirit of hiding ones head in the sand, I feel like I have less and less to say on the interwebs these days. I feel like the state of the world is just making me draw more and more inward. The collapse of american democracy is getting me in touch with my inner introvert. That’s my natural state, I think. Despite being a ridiculous online over-sharer over the last 25+ years or so, the real me is someone who clams up and doesn’t speak unless spoken to. I feel that I am losing the fight to not be that way all the time. Social media used to be my personal revolution (this is getting way too dramatic), but facebook and twitter and instagram and threads are all dead to me now. Flickr is a social media site at its core, but I don’t use it in that sense very much. I still use bluesky, but with each passing day I find I have less and less to say. I’ve been using Flashes as an instagram alternative, but that app is literally just bluesky with a filter to only show posts with images.

This isn’t a censorship thing. I’m not afraid to speak out. trump is a fucking fascist who needs to rot in prison for the rest of his miserable, evil life. See? I am not afraid to say what needs to be said. I just don’t feel much of an urge to speak up anymore. It’s not even that… it’s more like I will speak out when I have something to say… I just don’t often feel like I have anything to say. I don’t know. I will say it’s one of the reasons I am considering canning this blog and all of the social media things I still use. If my country doesn’t give a fuck about me anymore, why would I waste the effort acting like I give a fuck about it in return? I do, and I will do what needs to be done… I think I am just tired.

Jen and I have been watching a show that is set in Australia. Maybe I’m just jealous of people who live in countries that aren’t actively eating themselves. I don’t know.

Boy… this is a depressing post, eh? Sorry. There will be cat photos at some point today. I promise.

PS: I am turning comments off. I’m not interested in comments on this one. I’m not sorry.

Snow on the Way

It’s going to snow tonight. Crap. I was going to see if Jen and Harry wanted to go for a drive to look at xmas lights, but now I just want to pull a blanket over my head and hide until the weather clears. I mean, winter officially starts at like 4:00am tomorrow morning. It’s bound to snow eventually. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

I did a couple of goofy things with this little bloggie today. This post will serve as a bit of a test for one of them. I added a couple of new share buttons. Bluesky and Threads (and Mastodon? Did I add that one too?) are new, and Tumblr was re-added after being removed at least once. I removed twitter/x as well because fuck that musk prick. Fuck him right in his fucking eye. I tested the Bluesky and Threads buttons and they work. I also set new posts to automatically post to Bluesky. When I publish this literary tome I will see if it worked.

Another change, which is internal and should only be viewable by me, is that I think I hooked up to Google Analytics. I’ve had that option for ages now but I never did it. I am at heart a stats geek, so why didn’t I? It seems like I am too late as my engagement stats (the ones built into wordpress.com) are down something like 70% since they peaked back in February. Allow me to make the same caveat I make every time I mention this page’s stats… I really don’t care about the stats, I am just a numbers nerd and like to mess around with them. Also, and definitely most importantly, being down 70% from a very small, some might say microscopic, number is just another small, microscopic, number, dig it? This is not one of those blogs that sees a gajillion hits an hour. I consider myself lucky when I average one hit an hour and in my experience that would be a lot. In other words, I am in no way interested in drumming up business with insipid brain droppings, dig? Like I said twice before in this post, I just like playing with numbers. I have a Computer Science degree for cripes sake. Numbers are fun. Whatever, I am curious if linking up to Google Analytics a) worked, and b) will show me anything fun. I’ll probably write 100000 posts about it over the next few days (assuming it worked, of course).

All of these changes are internal but they might be a hint that a bloggie shake up is coming, and you know what that means… that means I am probably going to start messing with the theme and the layout. Sometimes Robert just cannot stop himself, you know?

What the hell was I talking about? I can’t remember. Oh yeah, it’s going to snow tonight. Doesn’t that suck? I think that sucks.

Oh well. I am going to click Publish now. Here’s hoping we cross post over to the ol’ Bluesky Social. Wish the bloggie luck……….

Myspace

Daily writing prompt
How do you use social media?
View all responses

In the early days of social media I used the holy hell out of it. Yahoo 360 was first for me. It had a blog space. I started writing whatever crap popped into my head. Not long after I moved over to Myspace and planted my social media flag there. Again, I used the bejeezus out of the blog there. Everything I posted there has been ported over here. Back in 2006 I connected with a woman through Myspace. She was nice and charming and funny and wonderful and today she is my wife. How is that for a social media success story?

By 2008 Myspace was history and Jen and I both started Twitter and Facebook (Bookfayce) accounts. I used them a lot. I mean, a lot. In November of 2008 I also started a stand alone blog on Blogger. Two of them, actually. One was public and the other was private. I kept anything related to my kids on the private account. Everything from both blogs now lives on this blog, just like the Myspace stuff. In 2009 I started an account on what might be one of the original social media platforms. Flickr. No one uses it socially anymore, mostly, but it is still the best site for hosting photos. I have a few there. By “a few” I mean over 55,000… so yeah, I use the hell out it.

When Instagram came along I sort of saw it as a companion to Flickr. I opened an account right away but closed it after a while. Then after some time passed I opened another one and then closed it. I can’t remember how many times I did that. I just didn’t like the interface. Scrolling kept “accidentally” marking things as favorites and it drove me friggin’ nuts. Eventually I just gave in and kept an account live. I still pop in once or twice a day, mostly to look at Les Pauls. I post there now and then but I don’t really interact with anyone. It’s like Flickr. It is a social media platform, but I am not terribly social on it.

A few years ago I got fed up with all of it. Facebook was turning into a cesspool as the fascist maga cult was pulling in people I knew and they were getting louder and louder and the idiotic algorithm was showing me more and more of that garbage and I just decided I didn’t want to go there anymore. I’ve missed out on a lot of family and friends stuff, but from a mental health standpoint I feel better about the world. When I started the weight loss surgery process it was suggested that I join some support groups on Facebook, so that pulled me back in for a while, but eventually I had a good enough grip on the situation that I wasn’t learning anything new anymore so I backed off again. I still pop in now and then to see what people are going through with their recoveries, but I don’t do it often. Twitter went from a similar sort of cesspool vibe to an absolutely ridiculous den of scummy bullshit when that musk putz bought them out. I don’t use that at all anymore.

I’m trying to keep my toes dipped in the social media world via a few Twitter alternatives. I want to pick one and just use that when I need a social fix, or when I am bored and want to kill a few minutes. Threads has a good music community but given that it’s a bookfayce product it makes me want to vomit when I use it. Bluesky and Mastodon are okay but I don’t really have a community to connect with on either platform so I don’t use them often. This blog cross posts to Mastodon so there’s that at least.

So the answer to the actual question, How do you use social media is that I try not to. Not really, at least. I was 100% invested in it back in the oughts and early teens, but now I just feel like it’s mostly outlived its usefulness. Instagram, Youtube, Flickr… yeah, I still use those regularly but I don’t really use them as social media outlets. I get all of my public bitching and moaning ya ya’s out on this page. I still use this thing a lot. I mean, a lot. Way too much. I mean, way too much. Part of me wants to stop entirely but I doubt I have the will power for that. Although… I thought the same thing about Bookfayce once too. Maybe… Maybe it’s time to just quit cold turkey. Probably not today though. Yeah, I am sure I can quit any time I want. You know that song, right?

Nazi Hunting on Threads

So Meta/facebook/Instagram just launched a new Twitter clone called Threads. I created an account and then immediately regretted it. I don’t want to do anything to support Meta and it’s subsidiaries anymore. I still use Instagram but it’s a terrible place. I still use Facebook, barely. I just go there for the bariatric surgery support groups. That’s about it. If I see pictures of my niece and nephews I’ll check them out, but other than that I’ve moved on.

Why then did I open a Threads account? One part curiosity, one part being that it just takes your existing instagram account and rolls it into the new service. Mostly because I am still pretty much the same social media whore who started blogging on MySpace all those years ago.

I’ve only posted on Threads once and it’s basically just my Bluesky user name. Thumbing my nose and all that. I may have found a use to justify the account though.

There is a topic getting a ton of attention on Bluesky today where people are reporting extreme right (call them what they are, nazi) accounts for spewing hate speech only to have the content moderation allow the hate speech to stay… because Meta is as nazi as the rest of them.

My purpose for having a Threads account therefore is to find examples of hate speech and report them so that everyone can see that hate speech is acceptable to the Meta folks and maybe that will bring about some sort of public backlash. Doubtful, but it’s worth a shot.

Fucking nazis.

Rough Night Tonight – Half Day Tomorrow

It was a pretty quiet day around here. Harry stayed at his dad’s house last night. Bellana stayed here but left for dad’s at around noon. We missed them both but made the best of it. Jen was busy so I mostly just goofed off with the new film blog and Instagram. The Instagram already has more engagement in two days than my main account has had in however many years it’s been up. It’s nuts. I put a couple of film related tags on each post and people are coming from all around. I’m getting more notice than I usually get from Flickr, and I do all right (by my own personal, meager, non- viral, non-influencer standards) on Flickr.

The rough patch came at dinner. I took one bite that was way too big. I knew it was bad as I was chewing it, but I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. Nope. I got nice and sick. I felt queasy for a while and thought it was going to pass. Nope. My food tracking spread sheet has a column for nausea. On a scale of 1-10, that particular instance was a 10. The worst experience yet, by a long way.

I wanted to play guitar today but did not. I probably won’t tomorrow either. I took a half day in the morning because I thought I was bringing Bellana to the Registry of Motor Vehicles (or whatever New Hampshire calls it). Nope. Dad is bringing her. I am now on car inspection detail instead. I want to be out early enough to warm up the car and get to the garage before they open. If I can get in and out quick I might work on some song ideas before I punch in. Or maybe I’ll put that weight bench together. We’ll see.

Until then, g’night.

Nerd Overload

Two thoughts on things to do with any pictures taken with Dad’s camera that don’t suck ass.

First, an Instagram account that only posts film? Hmm, maybe.

Second, spin off a new WordPress page that only posts film? Hmm, maybe.

Bonus third thought…. Do both. Speaking as a total content whore, this one seems likely.

Assuming there is anything worth keeping when I get the results back. That’s a tremendous if.

Unrelated thought… Dad’s camera has a 50mm prime lens. I’ve been wanting one of those for my Nikon for years. Let’s assume I get one before we go to Disney. Should I then get a Nikon film camera that can use the same lens and bring that and my D90 to Disney in January and leave Dad’s camera home where it will be safe? Assuming I can get a super simple Nikon film model for super cheap, of course. I’m thinking one roll of film per day. When the day’s roll is finished, switch to digital. Maybe.

I Friggin Hate Facebook

One day back on the bookfayce and I want to punch it in the fucking throat.

I left most of the groups I was in and unfollowed a bunch of pages. I kept a couple of guitar groups and a a couple of podcast groups but that’s it.

The first thing I saw after I refreshed for the first time was a post in a guitar group bitching about politics.

Fuck facebook. Fuck it right in its fucking ear.

Weakness

I’m feeling weak today.

No it’s not a physical strength thing. I’m still freakishly strong (or so they say).

No… it’s… a Facebook thing. There’s a part of me that wants to just say duck* it and install the Facebook app on my iPhone and see what’s going on in the old guitar gear groups.

Yeah… weak.

*I thought it would be funny to purposely use the word duck, which we all know is autocorrect’s go-to fix for fuck. Unfortunately, when I tried typing out duck it somehow autocorrected to suck. I must have mistyped, but it felt like autocorrect was making fun of me for trying to make fun of it.

How Goes the Facebook Crusade?

I haven’t mentioned the old anti-Facebook crusade that I started a while ago in some time? How’s that going, Robert?

Well I’m glad you asked. It’s been three weeks or so since last I mentioned it and I’m sad to say I’ve actually been on Facebook twice in that time. It’s okay though, I can explain.

First, now that I’m off my father decided to create a new account. I don’t think the two things are related, but the timing is a little crummy for me. My sister mentioned that he sent a friend request. I logged in, accepted it, and logged out. That was it.

Second, I was listening to a podcast focused on cover bands. One of the hosts mentioned a music venue in Manchester, NH that I wasn’t familiar with. I Googled it and clicked on the first link to come up. It was their Facebook page. I wasn’t logged in but I still clicked off as soon as I saw the banner. Nope, no Facebook for this red head.

That’s it. So since the whole thing started almost two months ago I’ve been logged in twice and on the system without logging in once.

I think I can do better than that in the future.

Ello

Why does Ello hate me?  I requested invites using two different email addresses and nothing.  Nada.  Zilch.  Zip.

I guess they hate me.  Remember when I wanted Google Wave invites and Google hated me?  There was another one too, was it Google Buzz?  I just want social media sites to accept me for who I am… a ridiculously tall red head with lots and lots to say about absolutely nothing of value.  Why does that rub these sites the wrong way?  Why don’t they like me?

I just want an invite.  Now I am a sad panda.