here i am, talking about twitter again. even though i’ve been able to wean myself off lately, i am still constantly thinking about the birdsite. while i post and interact in these new places, i am observing its collapse in realtime.

the world’s most divorced man, the permanent main character and chief twit, has actually been worse for the site than i anticipated. i’d blocked him a while back so i didn’t realize how much of a weirdo he is. now that i am constantly seeing his tweets screenshot, it is clear that a troll is in charge.

infrastructure failing isn’t what concerns me now, it’s content degradation, ie harassment, and spam. look under any of chief twit’s posts, and you’ll see a ton of bullshit bitcoin shilling and other nonsense. he has also unbanned a number of awful right-wing type individuals, like mtg’s personal account, jordan peterson, and sargon of akkad.

a list of “antifa acounts” with over 500 usernames is being circulated by idiots in hopes of mass reporting and removing leftists from twitter. now that an ian miles cheong reply guy is in charge, it is easy to see how this can happen.

let’s be honest, twitter has never been a great spot for leftists. there are plenty of fascists and transphobes who do not get banned (libs of tiktok, lookin at you) and seem to have free reign to harass. twitter won’t die, but it is going to rot for a while. if the chief twit keeps going like this, it will just be another 8kun-type hangout.

with this in mind, i’ve made a real effort to shift my social media focus. beta testing, more or less, what content and shitposts i want to put where. some preliminary thoughts:

mastodon
i’ve been on mastodon (on and off) for a while, and it is fine. i have not found that many people to follow, and almost noone follows me back. having separate instances has up and downsides, mostly that it’s harder to find people to follow.

pillowfort
i wanted to like pillowfort, it has such livejournal vibes. but i feel like a ghost on there! and most of the art posted in communities i want to follow isn’t really my taste.

cohost
early-tumblr vibes. i like how i can save tags and that is one feed i can check out. it feels like a good place for shitposting and memes. plus, have you seen the mascot, eggbug? v. cute and memeable.

hive
definitely the most twitter-like of the sites, and so far a lot of comix people i like and admire are using it. the community is such a big consideration for any social site, and as one person you really have no control over where peers end up posting. it is nice that it feels like a comix community is building over on hive ^[1]insert bee pun here.

conclusions:

currently i am having the most fun with cohost and hive. as expected, things are a bit slower than on twitter. but they have a higher percentage of folks i know (irl and online/from twitter) i will probably keep posting older comics. my followed tags on cohost is keeping me busy, but so far i’m not as much of an active poster.

as twitter continues thru stages of rot, i expect these sites will see more activity. i should have more to say about this social media beta test soon!