Goldkin @Goldkin@awoo.space

@mawr !!! ^..^

Forgot to post it here, but I finished Smaugust successfully this year. Arts are here: http://colorslive.com/author?id=33323

I’m also thinking of making more arts of this floof, but haven’t figured out exactly what yet:
https://awoo.space/media/DBzqt8PXgqiaHuduxmY

@Soreth It’s been too much for me, too. All of the hugs. All of them.

@mawr No prob!

@mawr Footnote: https://mobile.twitter.com/Harkaway/status/1036682350170656769

Fascism and abuse is efficient for ad clicks, at the expense of human activity. Which is the most succinct explanation I’ve seen for how Twitter got there in the first place.

@mawr So yeah. Fuck Twitter’s business model forever.

@mawr Also, I realized I missed including some context for how we get from Jones to bots.

The far-right media hellscape is an abuse and controversy factory meant to wear folks down, with accounts like Mike C and Jones on the supply side and bots forming the delivery pipeline. There are some very informative studies on how this is not an organic pattern, that it can be blocked, but Twitter is not doing so (in the US) because of their business model.

@mawr I also ignore Twitter’s official reasoning on decisions at this point, because short-term profit motivation is more predictive (and I think accurate) under scrutiny.

Twitter has a legit fear of stock value dropping once bots stop showing up in their active user figures. That fear now has precedent after causing the single greatest drop of Facebook stock when FB started removing bots.

I could almost sympathize, if it wasn’t so fucking evil.

@mawr It seems to be a combination of that, Jones’ screaming at conservative members of Congress, and the hearings on “bias against conservatives” (ugh) that Twitter and Facebook are up for this week, and how those play in the “conservative” (read: far right) media ecosystem.

I think what changed is Jones being *just* unpopular enough in terms of ad revenue to finally dump off the platform.

Oh good, they banned him, even if they lied again about their reasoning for doing so. Hopefully this starts a trend of conspiracy theorists like Jones being kryptonite to major platform owners.

I will never forget them tolerating it when they thought it would be profitable. Fuck you forever, Jack.

@mawr There are more than a few days that I wish scribbling “Duplicator” on the side of a cardboard box would actually work as a time-management strategy.

After crossing out “Transmogrifier” for the fiftieth time, for some reason.

My project space is messy and cluttered in a way that facilitates picking things up and working on them, and I would not have it any other way.

“So, what projects are you working on these days?”

Me: Not much, just a few art projects on the side, when I’m not working.

Also me:
https://awoo.space/media/kE7qI7vL710wlPYCxqI

I guess this is all of a way of rambling out that I think Masto is great, that it has a place in replacing birdhellsite for community, but that culturally there is still a thing missing for people that want to post and keep track of larger projects again.

So I think I’m going to try to figure out what shape of that works for me, more than trying to figure out how to make that work with Masto.

I find myself spending much more time now working with people who are creating stuff that takes a long time, and isn’t based around common cultural touchstones that share rapidly, so much as labors of love they’ve invested in (including my own longer-form projects). And... Masto isn’t shaping itself well around those discussions for me, in ways I cannot easily articulate.

But chat, project boards, longer posts, and in-person are, so I’ve been there instead.

I think this is a common trend and mostly a pendulum swing, because the same trend happened with BBSes, USENET, and around the advent of early forum software and image hosting. Enough people diasporaed off of bigger hosts, causing the next iteration to slowly come online.

I guess the other side of Masto not working for me is personal: I lack the unbounded optimism for public posting I had for LJ and early Twitter, and the jump from long-form projects to memes doesn’t work for me.

I think my conclusion is that I’m going to use other services than Masto for art blog and public presence, and relegate to communities off Masto for now. Birdhellsite and Tumblr are better image boards (masto-dot-art is getting there), and I’ve submarined most of my personal life nattering to other communities.

I’ll miss having the fusion of public discussion and community around neat projects that was LJ or early Twitter, but so far, I’m not finding that just yet through Masto.

So, other than rawring about and continuing to migrate away from birdsite, what have I been up to?

* I finished another year of Art Fight. All of the renders are here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/u3g339ish3kbuh9/AABqPIDVimHq40nydMmoDEUKa?dl=0

* I'm participating in Smaugust! In which I am deliberately using media I am less experienced with to learn things, here: http://colorslive.com/author?id=33323

* I am working through Monster Hunter World for PC! If anyone would like to join me, please feel free to add me on Steam as Goldkin.

@mawr The specific difficulty I’m having is using Masto as an art blog. The shape of it as a community bulletin board is good, but works less well as a public presence for “here’s a bunch of neat stuff I’m working on”.

I guess I need to figure out how to make one of those elsewhere, because it’s how I primarily used birdsite, and I want to move that presence elsewhere.

Which makes me sorely miss when I could just make said art blog and tell everyone to subscribe via RSS.

I guess I do have a masto-dot-art account I can start making more use of. But I guess it seems split-brain to use so many different accounts, and part of why that never really worked for me.

I could also assume I’m worrying to much and post all the things as unlisted?