#118

drafts/Against a Social Media Methodology.md

@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 
 A big theme in my 20s has been coming (slowly) to terms with the fact that I built my entire adult social life around a single, centralized social media Web Site. I mentioned this in [my Tweetbot 6 review](https://bilge.world/tweetbot-6-ios-review), recently, but - as I also strive to be a more sincere person and spend more time adding value to _others_’ lives - I’ve concluded that it is the time now to speak as openly and vulnerably as I can about my “Social Media Methodology.” Most of the resulting insights will not be new information, but I continue to encounter greater and greater confusion in the face of my well-meaning behavior online and I have decided to stop disregarding it. 
 
-This is _not_ an essay about how to “optimize” your social media use. It is - at least in part - a sort of manifesto against the very idea of designed online behavior beyond simply **being considerate** in a sense that predates even the spoken word. I, myself, have occupied a position well on the _chaotic_ side of the spectrum. You could say I have been mostly _chaotic neutral_ throughout my 12 years on Twitter thus far, and am actively working toward (and advocating for) _chaotic good_.
+This is _not_ an essay about how to “optimize” your social media use. It is - at least in part - a sort of manifesto against the very idea of designed online behavior beyond simply **being considerate** in a sense that predates even the spoken word. I, myself, have occupied a position well on the _chaotic_ side of the spectrum. You could say I have been mostly _chaotic neutral_ throughout my 12 years on Twitter thus far, and am actively working toward (and advocating for) _chaotic good_. Perhaps inevitably, I'm going to wade into some experiences with a few specific social media phenomena which I am particularly reacting to, here. 
 
 <blockquote class="twitter-tweet tw-align-center"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">I do not understand the mentality of Twitter users who behave as if it is an intraweb competition and/or it has value in and of itself.</p>&mdash; ※ David Blue ※ (@NeoYokel) <a href="https://twitter.com/NeoYokel/status/753114804617932801">July 13, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
@@ -24,9 +24,9 @@ Over the past few months, I've started a few Posts for this blog regarding Twitt
 
 ![Clubhouse Blasted Logo](https://i.snap.as/hf2fIH9M.png)
 
-## Clubhouse
+## The (‽‽‽th) Social Audio Renaissance 
 
-Exactly one month ago, I finally [broke into Clubhouse](https://www.joinclubhouse.com/@davidblue) thanks to a random kind stranger on Twitter who preferred not to be named. April 25th was the first time I set eyes on the app - though I could've (and usually would've) looked up screenshots and/or browsed the litter of how tos available, I did not. By this time, I'd accumulated quite a bit of experience with Twitter Spaces - derided universally by tech media as a "Clubhouse clone" - and therefore assumed the original would be "better," at least in pure feature terms. What I found, however, was even *less* evidence that anyone building Clubhouse has been/is/intends to be a regular Clubhouse user. Spaces, at least, included five emoji reacts for listeners from the beginning:  💯✊✌️👋😂. Clubhouses' exclusive means of Listener-Host interaction is Hand Raising, which is essentially requesting to speak, even though the hand waving emoji is [*literally featured in their logo*](https://joinclubhouse.com/press). (The fact that neither have thought to add 🙌 is absolutely inexcusable/inexplicable.)
+Exactly one month ago, I finally [broke into Clubhouse](https://www.joinclubhouse.com/@davidblue) thanks to a random kind stranger on Twitter who preferred not to be named. April 25th was the first time I set eyes on the app - though I could've (and usually would've) looked up screenshots and/or browsed the litter of how tos available, I did not. By this time, I'd accumulated quite a bit of experience with Twitter Spaces - derided universally by tech media as a "Clubhouse clone" - and therefore assumed the original would be "better," at least in pure feature terms. What I found, however, was even *less* evidence that anyone building Clubhouse has been/is/intends to be a regular Clubhouse user. Spaces, at least, included five emoji reacts for listeners from the beginning:  💯✊✌️👋😂. Clubhouse's exclusive means of Listener-Host interaction is Hand Raising, which is essentially requesting to speak, even though the hand waving emoji is [*literally featured in their logo*](https://joinclubhouse.com/press). (The fact that neither have thought to add 🙌 is absolutely inexcusable/inexplicable.)
 
 <blockquote class="twitter-tweet tw-align-center"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">so clubhouse is #14 on the app store, but only to reserve one’s username. nice. hype.</p>&mdash; ※ David Blue ※ (@NeoYokel) <a href="https://twitter.com/NeoYokel/status/1344473573226762241">December 31, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
@@ -60,4 +60,18 @@ I wrote the assumptions at the beginning of this Post in a single go after [a pa
 >
 > It is hard to shake the feeling that everyone on Clubhouse is selling something: a company, a workshop, a show, a book, a brand.
 
-More recently, her publication's nemesis declared "[The Clubhouse Party is Over](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/04/the-clubhouse-party-is-over)," but I wouldn't know. None of my friends have ever Tweeted a Clubhouse link (determinable via [this Twitter search](https://twitter.com/search?q=%22joinclubhouse%22&src=typed_query&f=live&pf=on).) Very few of the tech industry celebrities I follow have, either - pretty much just [Chris Messina](https://twitter.com/chrismessina) and [Jason Calacanis](https://twitter.com/Jason). This is noteworthy because 
+More recently, her publication's nemesis declared "[The Clubhouse Party is Over](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/04/the-clubhouse-party-is-over)," but I wouldn't know. None of my friends have ever Tweeted a Clubhouse link (determinable via [this Twitter search](https://twitter.com/search?q=%22joinclubhouse%22&src=typed_query&f=live&pf=on).) Very few of the tech industry celebrities I follow have, either - pretty much just [Chris Messina](https://twitter.com/chrismessina) and [Jason Calacanis](https://twitter.com/Jason). This is noteworthy because I believe [my list of followed accounts on Twitter](https://twitter.com/NeoYokel/following) to be particularly diverse. I actively followed accounts across my various interests from ages 15-25 (when I hit my [follow limit](https://bit.ly/dbfollow)) and basically *never unfollowed anyone*. I would imagine there are several accounts within that list which I would be ashamed to be associated with, now, and yet none have shared a Clubhouse link. Reading any further into this observation would require actual data journalism, which I'll leave to the pros. It does prompt the question, though: if nobody I've ever known or been interested in on Twitter is using Clubhouse, ***who* in fuck *is***?
+
+A reprieve: I have at least one positive answer for you. At some point, I stumbled in a room hosted within a Club called "[No Thoughts, Head Empty](https://www.joinclubhouse.com/club/no-thoughts-head-em)," which - as far as I can tell - is mostly made up of young professional/academic individuals of distinctly *non*-Judeochristian origin, if that makes sense. That's about as specific a label as I am comfortable with applying to them as a whole apart from their genuine, bountiful enthusiasm for doge. They have indulged my questions and anecdotes on several occasions and have become the singular reason Clubhouse is still installed on my handset.
+
+Frankly, I do not understand the business incentive behind the massive duplication of other software/services defining featuresets of late. I see that Instagram stories have eclipsed Snapchat's in terms of [sheer user count](https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/28/technology/instagram-stories-users/index.html), but I do not understand why its leaders would choose to fuck their legacy by such blatant idea theft, much less why [Twitter](https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/product/2020/introducing-fleets-new-way-to-join-the-conversation.html), [Facebook](https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/28/facebook-launches-stories-in-the-main-facebook-app), [Patreon](https://blog.patreon.com/lens/) and even fucking [LinkedIn](https://www.inputmag.com/culture/nobody-wants-stories-on-their-linkedin-feed) have implemented nearly-identical featuresets. Though I know Ben Thompson's word on these matters should be easily digestible, I haven't been able to actually take a bite. For the End User, especially, I cannot even begin to conceive of what the leaders behind these decisions imagine the day-to-day experience of the average social media user looks like in the near future. *How many apps* am I going to cycle through to get a single story-type piece of content satisfactorily shared? Personally, I currently use three, and sharing a single bit individually across all of them one-by-one (since the current state of APIs is not conducive to consumer-targeted mass-sharing tools) makes me feel utterly insane.
+
+My lack of understanding would be meaningless if it were not so widely shared among my peers - young, brilliant, multifaceted, and distinctly-original creators who (in large part) make stuff on the internet full-time. *They* are who I'd actually plan ahead to hear from in a live broadcast setting like Clubhouse or Twitter Spaces, but Twitch seems to do just fine. For audio broadcasts, specifically, the *hip*, fresh sources which come to mind are all distinctly Open Web: [Datafruits.fm](https://datafruits.fm/), [Solarpunk.cool](https://solarpunk.cool/magic/computer/club/), [Poolside.fm](http://poolside.fm/), and my Mastodon friend [Vanta's stream](https://radio.schizoid.tech/). The potential of the term "social audio" is truly being explored by projects like [Rave.DJ](https://www.patreon.com/RaveDJ) - a homegrown, Patreon-funded service for sharing mixes/mashups. On a smaller scale, the sky is the limit for [Whyp.it](https://whyp.it/) as a pure audio playback/annotation tool for creators (as developed by Brad Varol, whom I [interviewed in March](https://lnns.co/ZSadwt3Hnfi).)
+
+<iframe src="https://www.listennotes.com/embedded/e/5331661b415f48d1a58e8c56a656a99e/" height="170px" width="auto" style="width: 1px; min-width: 100%;" loading="lazy" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe>
+
+Compared to these, most of Clubhouse's communities seem bleak at best. As I may or may not get around to arguing thoroughly about Twitter Spaces, these services' fundamental, near-complete disinterest in **discovery** of new voices and their subsequent servitude to only their most popular users should be extremely worrying for us all - including those who benefit most.
+
+## Fulfillment Analytics
+
+I am not a social scientist, data analyst of any kind, established media-facing academic, or even a real web developer. On social media, I am nothing more than an early adopting End User, but 

notes/SocialMediaMethodologyNotes.md

@@ -25,6 +25,8 @@ For a good part of my Junior and Senior years of high school,
 
 * Frankly, the cool broadcasts I want to hear are all from Open Web sources: [Datafruits](https://datafruits.fm/), Solarpunk.cool, etc.
 
+* The long lost love: **Discovery**.
+
 ## Assumptions in Question
 
 1. For the vast majority of mainstream social users, no amount of [insert vague overused marketing jargon noun] will *ever* result in a substantial accumulation of money/"influence" (which seems to be the diluted zag of "POWER" of the moment.) Those interested in learning about "marketing" should know that no authority on the subject would ever tell you to *start* with Twitter - this I can say with certainty.