#Ablogalypse Now

Let’s revolutionize “social media”

Twitter is in the shitter, a tool of MAGA Fascism. Facebook is inundated with junk, the plaything of assorted foreign powers with malign intentions. “Slavic ladies want to meet you!” I do little on Instagram (every so often a well-endowed young woman enlists her/itself as a follower, only to disappear soon after), none with Tick Tock. Mastodon and Bluesky don’t seem to be going anywhere. My old blog carved out a decent presence, back in the day (2003-2006). My Twitter/X feed has been a dismal failure, despite years of brilliant tweets.

For genuine community, we have to turn the clock back to around 2004, when blogs were in flower. I’m talking about websites where individual personalities held forth and provoked lengthy discussions in open comments sections among frequent visitors.

At some point some of the higher traffic bloggers went commercial. Many readers started spending most of their online time on Facebook and Twitter. Many of the communities that we had were lost, but it would be nice to recover them now in these dark times. The parallel decay of commercial and giant tech sites leaves an open field.

There are still some holdouts in the world of blogging. My interest is in amplifying those on the left side of the spectrum, including of course myself. I can understand those who need to squeeze a living out of their writing. I don’t. Full participation in this web site is free. Donations are appreciated, and I don’t need them for income, but they do make me happy.

At some point I will resuscitate my own blog, but I don’t want to abandon this platform. Free web design assistance would be welcome. Until then, this substack will be the primary outlet. In WordPress, there is a plugin that automatically reposts substacks to the blog. What I would really like is somebody who can recover ancient blog posts from 20 years ago via the Wayback Machine and place them in a new WordPress installation. Then I could add these Substack posts and “MaxSpeak, You Listen!” can return to its former glory.

I would like to see a collective effort to get up a posse of those who persist in blogging. The objective is to encourage us to provide mutual, positive reinforcement, the same way malicious bots do on behalf of a wide array of terrible sponsors. A simple device is for each to promote a common list of like-minded sources (flexibly defined), what used to be called a blogroll. Other types of reciprocity based on inter-blog exchange could be helpful as well. Better ideas would be welcome.

I don’t have the chops to automate this on the leading social media platforms, the way bots do. Perhaps some techy genius can lend a hand. Yes we have to use these things, the better to destroy them from within.

Back in the day, I helped set up a “trans-partisan” antiwar website called “Stand Down” (nowarblog.org). (The Iraq disaster was jumping off then.) These days the ranks of what I called “real libertarians” may be thinner, but some have useful contributions to make, so I would like to reel them into my scheme too. Back then, you could not be a real libertarian and support Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Today, you can’t be one and indulge the MAGA movement.

My policy used to be “Few enemies to the left,” but these days the ranks of intolerable left-pretenders has ballooned. A useful chronicle can be seen on the https://x.com/PostLeftWatch X feed. So at this moment I have to more choosy about left allies. I have too many friends who won’t vote Democrat this year, so I can’t shun them all on principle. But in my view it’s possible to go too far in that direction. Vax-skepticism is a deal-breaker. Adulation of Putin or Bashir Assad, forget it. Shadowproof, we hardly knew ye (Sorry, Max). Matt Taibbi, THBBFT!

The quality of discussion on X and Facebook can be pretty bad. On X, it’s easy to find a thread where contributors don’t bother to read the links that were being discussed. Responding based on the most superficial take on the thread is a kind of automatic reflex.

On Facebook, I’m in a “foodies” group specific to my region. The variance in taste in wide, from those asking “where are the best chicken wings” or “what’s your favorite instant noodles” to requests for upscale restaurant ideas. Fine. I posted a simple question, “Where can I buy smoked sable?” More than one dummy just said, go to a seafood store. Wrong and fuck you, dummy. Those places don’t sell smoked fish. The replies were both ignorant and condescending. (Turns out sable is pretty hard to find, not to mention hella expensive if you do find it.)

In political blog comments, you could get nasty posts, but at least those are motivated by an ethos, as Lebowski might say. On Facebook and X, for most, posting something, anything, is more like scratching an itch.