There are a variety of ways to publish to the people in the small town I live in. The most active is the private Facebook group. An incredible resource and a good place to publish nature pictures because we are surrounded by so much of it. It's a very photogenic place.#
But my immediate neighbors don't use Facebook. So where should I post photos I want to share with them? Interestingly they used to have a blog, before Facebook and Twitter became the thing. They stopped updating. Like so many did. #
I tried starting a blog just for the town, but got some negative response. "The Internet" has spoiled some of the natural places here, an instance of the phenomenon of Instagrammers showing up at beautfiul places and making them un-beautiful, un-usable. For some reason I was associated with that. As far as I know my web writing has never destroyed anything but my own privacy (esp in the early days, omg it was so fucked up what people would do). #
Anyway I just want to point out the conundrum. We still haven't settled the dust on the emergence of social networks. There's no way to work around them. It's as if we live in Jersey and want to get to Brooklyn but there are no bridges over the Hudson. #
I wish Jack and company would listen to my proposal. It's one of those low-tech things that will have a remarkable rebirthing effect on the web. I can explain why, or they could just do it, and we all will reap the rewards, but mostly them. All I want to do is publish my writing through Twitter, and make tools for other writers to do it too. It's no fun to make GIFs out of my text. #
I want us to undo the mistake we made, collectively, in walking away from the powerful open and independent amateur publishing features of the web. #
Last update: Wednesday December 18, 2019; 10:02 AM EST.
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)
