Reconsidering POSSE
in which the author introduces himself to people frequenting platforms like Bear Blog and Buttondown
The last time I considered syndicating material from starbreaker.org via POSSE, it was in the context of parasocial media. I ended up dismissing the notion, along with ActivityPub and the “social web”. I am, however, reconsidering syndication.
I am not reconsidering social media. The Fediverse is still mainly a imitation of proprietary social platforms like Twitter where one is more likely to find cacophony than community. It is not worth my time. Whether it is worth your time is not for me to decide, but if you were to ask my opinion I would say “no”.
Bluesky is likewise an imitation of Twitter. It is built mainly on a “decentralized” protocol that no other platform implements. Its CEO, Jay Graber, can wear as many Mundus sin caesaribus. t-shirts as she likes. She could upgrade to t-shirts that say, Mundus sin diis et caesaribus, (a world without gods and Caesars) if she wanted. She can likewise talk about making Bluesky billionaire-proof until the first Tuesday after Ragnarök if she wants. It won’t make a difference once the likes of Bain Capital start demanding a return on their investments; Bluesky will be monetized at the expense of the digital sharecroppers whose unpaid intellectual and emotional labor made the platform valuable in the first place.
I will laugh contemptuously at those who display shock at the inevitable, as if this has not happened with most Web 2.0 platforms time and again, and people really should know better by now. Why? Because I’m a bastard by birth and temperament; though my mother tried to make a gentleman of me, I still prefer brunettes. (Also, like the flaming wonder telepath in the Blue Öyster Cult song, my jokes are often made in ire — and the joke’s on you.)
Besides, neither mainstream Fediverse platforms like Mastodon nor Bluesky support long texts, let alone long texts with lots of links.
However, it had since occurred to me that I need not syndicate to such platforms. What is to stop me from copying posts to platforms like Bear Blog, write.as, or Dreamwidth? What is to stop me from syndicating to a newsletter service like Buttondown? What, besides the foolishness of Matt Mullenweg, is to stop me from afflicting WordPress with my words?
There’s nothing, save these platforms’ respective terms of service. That is easily dealt with; I need not syndicate everything. Selective syndication would be easier and more convenient for me, anyway.
It is for this reason that you might see this post, and others, on sites other than starbreaker.org. Perhaps you will like what you read, or be intrigued by it. Perhaps you might even visit my website and subscribe to its feeds.
If not, that too is acceptable. You might change your mind. Likewise if the platforms to which I syndicate shut down. My website will still be there.
Therefore, please allow me to introduce myself. I’m Matthew, a man of modest means and plebeian tastes, whom my parents named after the wrong apostle — ‘Thomas’ would have been more apt considering the man I made of myself. I’m a writer by choice, a programmer by necessity, and a metalhead by the grace of the witch. I’m a New Yorker from the tail end of Generation X, and a working-class college dropout with delusions of erudition. I’m autistic because God drinks on the job, and They were ever a sloppy demiurge at best.
I run starbreaker.org at my own expense and for my own pleasure, as a sacrament of defiance. You may have heard of me, or read something of mine. At least, I flatter myself by thinking so. I am syndicating selected material from my website to other platforms because — despite my efforts — I remain sufficiently human to occasionally crave attention and validation.
I also do it because web feeds are neither as popular as they had once been or as familiar a technology as I think it should be, and thus I wish to accommodate people who are unfamiliar with RSS or do not care for it. You may find, should you decide my writing is not to my taste, that this is not the kindness it might seem. I will not be offended should you decide against reading anything I’ve written, for I have cultivated a writing style and authorial persona that is not to everybody’s taste. One cannot please everybody; it is hard enough for a writer to please themselves, let alone an audience.
#introduction #POSSE #IndieWeb #SocialMedia
This post originally appeared on starbreaker.org on 2025-03-16.
Its permalink is https://starbreaker.org/grimoire/entries/reconsidering-posse/index.html.
kudos to contact+writeas@starbreaker.org
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