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I seem to be posting to social media less frequently lately.
That's not to say I'm not still doing so regularly, mind you. The difference is, there were two days within the past week in which I did not post to my socials at all. Up until recently, I might skip just one day every once in a while, but three days skipped within a five-day span? That's unheard of. What's more, it's Thursday right now, and the one thing I've posted to socials
since Saturday was just a link to my latest movie review. Setting aside my reviews, I have posted nothing to my socials in the past five days. For me, that's kind of nuts.
But, maybe just a natural progression of things? It's made things easier on me in terms of posting my Twitter digests each morning, that's for sure—especially since the ongoing process of Twitter falling apart ever since Elon Musk took over has resulted in the automatic digests posting over at my old LiveJournal is erratic at best. I consistently have to use old posts as templates for constructing a new day's digest, with all its html commands, from scratch. It's annoyingly and pointlessly time consuming.
Twitter, in particular, has been a part of my daily life now for fifteen years. I joined in 2008, and for the first few years, it was a true obsession—it annoyed Shobhit to no end. I remember visiting Shobhit once in New York while he lived there in 2010, and we were in a crowd of people and I tripped over a curb while looking at my phone. His concern was far less about whether I was okay (people around me quickly came to my aid, one of many examples of New York City proving to be far more friendly than its nationwide reputation would have you believe) than with what he perceived to be my carelessness.
The novelty of Twitter dissipated ages ago, but for a good many years, both Twitter and Facebook, broadly problematic as they have clearly proved to be for ages, are fairly easily manipulated to serve your own needs and interests if you just learn how. Twitter rather defied expectations by becoming a far bigger shit show than Facebook once Elon Musk's ineptitude and shortsighted cockiness seeped in with astonishing swiftness. I still use it fairly effectively with curated lists, but, actually these days in the case of nearly all socials, I spend a lot more time posting than I do scrolling. At least, until just recently, when even my posting has lessened in frequency. I have no idea if that will be permanent or not.
I'd say the clear exception is TikTok, which has captured my attention since 2020 in a similar way to Twitter in the late 2000s—thus also similarly irritating Shobhit. TikTok is far less suited to my skills as a poster, however, as it's so much more geared toward video recording and editing than the writing and photography that defines other platforms. I post to my TikTok on everage once every two or three months, and have no real potential for going viral for any reason (not that I ever did on other socials either, although I have longstanding fans of my content there). My TikToks tend to be a little more obscure in nature, and honestly I just use it for the tools offered there not offered on other platforms.
Even TikTok is a bit past its novelty, although I will say that it remains far more effective at keeping me appraised of social justice issues across the nation, just because of the posts I engage with, which the algorithm picks up on and then shows me more similar content. (The way their algorithm works, designed just to retain engagement, is good for leftists interested in justice; but also terrible in the way it similarly keeps bigots engaged and enraged. Not that I am naive about the similar ways Twitter's and Facebook's algorithms have also worked; it's just that TikTok really perfected it.)
I think it could be argued that social media is the one thing that has impacted our culture the most immediately and the most widely since the invention of the internet itself. I think we may be on the cusp of the next wave of virtual evoltuion. I couldn't say what that next thing will be, though. No one ever really knows the answer to that.
The one thing tripping me out right now is the degree of serious discussion about the moral implications of using AI to
write scripts,
a key component of the current WGA writer's strike. What a strange world we live in.
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— पांच हजार तीन सौ नब्बे-सात —
I didn't think I would have much to write about today, but then I went on about social media. It's rarely all that difficult for me to ramble on about random things here.
There really isn't that much to report about last night, except to say that Shobhit convinced me to come down to the p-patch with him while he watered his plots. We ran into Alexia at the mail boxes in the lobby, and she told us about a neighbor she met for the first time and had just spent half an hour in her condo, after he accidentally dropped his keys down the elevator shaft.
I can't remember his name, only that he came into the lobby while we were talking; Shobhit and I were properly introduced to him for the first time; he moved in about a year ago; and he's fairly handsome. Also, this is the second time I've ever heard of this occurring—the first one having been when my former roommate Tommy, who lived with me for a year and a half between 2015 and 2016, did the same. I was astonished at the time that it was even possible to make such a mistake, and then discovered the space between the elevator and the door is indeed just wide enough, if you happen to aim perfectly on the off chance that you drop your keyes. It's made me much more careful about handling my keyes in the elevator, I can tell you that.
Tommy had actually been comparatively lucky, as even though he had to wait for me to come home, at least he lived with someone else with a set of keys. This guy, so far as I could tell, did not. He had to call the building management company, and wait for Aland the building manager to come and let him back into his own condo.
Anyway. Before that, Shobhit went out for maybe two hours to do more door knocking, and got another six contributions to his campaign. I think he's gotten pretty efficient and effective at this, and I keep wondering how he compares to the other candidates. Joy Hollingsworth remains the candidate with the most Democracy Vouchers, procured incredibly early, which may be why she doesn't seem to be as actively campaigning as the others who have yet to qualify for filing later this month. Or, conversely, maybe she's just been focusing on her own neighborhood of the Central District, which Shobhit should really start getting into himself. That's entirely possible.
After he got back, and he watered his vegetables, we caught up on some TV: an episode each of
The Power on Prime Video (much better than the previous episode; there's now one episode left, apparently to be released tomorrow—which means it should be available tonight actually) and
Ted Lasso on Apple TV.
I also got a fair amount of pages read in my library book. I think I'll have it done within the week, and I finally move on to the Book Club book, which I am very interested in but won't be nearly as a delightful a read as
Oscar Wars has been. This will likely be my favorite book I read all year.
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[posted 12:36 pm]
