Imperfect

chumps to change

Inspired by Brian's are we bloggers the chumps.

I don't find the "popular sentiment on bear blog that the wider world of social media is... bad" particularly helpful. Hostile platforms and followings alike hold hospitable pockets where you can win by your own rules, even if it's within their rules.

perhaps I should actually stay on those platforms and try to exert my influence

Yes, "I can define success on my own terms". Join more platforms for less overall hostility and varied rule sets, leading to more sustainable flexibility. If you prefer less hostile platforms or rolling your own, be my guest.

tweets can go viral because they’re short and punchy — because they’re easy for somebody to read, understand, and smash the retweet button on. my discursive, hedgy posts where I constantly second-guess myself wouldn’t go viral even if I were able to transplant them onto a platform with a repost button.

i’m not going to stop my longform posting or forsake its longwinded nature, targeting the small sliver of people like myself, extreme in their own way in their preferences. why not both?

Too many tweets and long posts alike have gone viral to think that you can't exceed in both disciplines, let alone achieve the best of both worlds. Take Visa's six-digit tweet count on his Twitter account. Compare it to his work-in-progress experiment to write "1,000 word vomits of 1,000 words each" in 1,000,000 words by @visakanv. Yes, both experiments have taken him more than a decade of consistent effort to get where they are today. While such empires are not built in a day, you can seize the day toward your very own.

equating success with reaching a large audience

How about equating success with reaching your minimum viable audience? May flimsy numbers make way for your terracotta army.

sure, ceteris paribus it would be great if I could wave a wand and manifest an additional shortform version of every post I make onto my local microblogging site, but haven’t I tried this already? when my simple thought turned into 300 characters when I typed it out? it’s not a skill I have

and it’s a skill i can develop, and it’s a skill that would be useful for me to develop!

Skills you don't yet have can not only be developed over time but with plenty of help from friends. Even in one's lonesome, I wonder how helpful becoming one's own reply guy can be toward sharpening self-understanding or the malleability described above. Expand the scales at which your writing or expression can captivate people you end up valuing and reciprocating with.

the dumbest possible plan is that it can be a title and a link to the full post here; that’s something a wand can manifest. it won’t perform well, but again, who cares? I think I have this illusory belief that every true fan (by which I mean something like the people all this posting is Really For, who will click with it; I don't expect or want fans of myself per se) is going to be willing to refresh my blog daily or wield an rss reader. as nice as it would be to live in that world, in reality it’s a big jump for many — habits are hard to form! meet them halfway, is all i’m saying. silently boycotting platforms on my own doesn’t do anything.

but do I think the would-be true fans are in fact using twitter/bluesky/whatever today

Sometimes, the dumbest possible plan is the smartest. Even the most content-brained YouTube personalities ingrain the "ask for what you want" mantra into cheesy canned phrases like "like, subscribe, and comment". As for engaging multiple platforms, use your presence within dense network effects to siphon true fans to less dense spaces. If you're not yet swinging with your true fans in the heart of the jungle and elsewhere, how can you overcome what stops you (if it isn't just... you)?

Want to reach out? Connect with me however you prefer: