David Emery Online

Everything old is new again

24 November 2022

What I realise, now, about getting old is that it is possibly less about the old, and more about the getting.

To experience something is often the only way to truly understand it, and sometimes that just takes a while. Or it takes being in the correct place at the correct time. I was fortunate to have been an eager twentysomething around that social media took off, deeply invested in the possibilities and potential. I’ve been on Twitter for 16 years, as of this week, which is less time then the going rate for defrauding people out of billions of dollars.

Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and those that followed have not exactly lived up to the wide-eyed potential that I hoped they could fulfil, sacrificing so much at the gods of engagement and growth.

Back to base principles, then. There’s two sides to social media: connections, and content. Blogging was—and remains—bad at connections, but having your own home for “content”—writing, photos, links, not so much video—that is not at the whims of bankers and billionaires is feeling like it might be a good idea again.

So here we are. I’ve dusted off the design so it works for things that aren’t big long articles, and am typing in the compose box like it’s 2001.

For the “connections” bit Mastodon seems like it… might work? But we’ll see. Follow me if you’re on there, or just add this site to your RSS reader. Those things still exist, too.