# An Argument Against Micro-logs

## The Internet Of Today

In the year of 2022, western society as a whole has been normalized to social media and all it entails. You know what im talking about, short little burst of peoples thoughts and ideas, what theyre doing at the moment, or sharing a meme. Some of the most powerful companies in the world got where they are by exploiting the human need for interaction expressing itself in the online format. The internet as it is now is designed to keep you on it, keep you connected, keep you distracted and placated. But things werent always this way.

## The Internet Of Yesterday

There was once a time that many of you remember well, the internet was a wild west, websites were made by the common person and not the common conglomeration. On a random walk through the internet one could stumble across all manor of sites. Some personal journals, some art projects, some utilities. 

## Oldschool Communication

IRC, fourms, USENET, and BBS have existed as outlets for people to talk to eachother since the grass-roots days of the internet from the late 80s through the 90s and into the early 2000s. Eventually Instant Messengers like AIM and Skype became all the rage, and are distant ancestors of todays chat programs like Discord.

Small, secular communities interacting with mostly themselves was the norm for the early internet. Myspace was, to my memory, one of the first precursors to modern day social media, and in its hayday it did what no other service had done before by allowing millions of people to interact and find eachother. That massive shift from secular communities to connected networks of people lead to a huge revolution in socializing through media. 

## When The Internet Boomed

It seems the late 2000s was a turning point for internet culture as a whole. A handful of once-homegrown websites consolidated into massive outlets for public interaction through appeal, strategy, and constant change. All of them had the same goals, viewer retention and clicks per second. Or to put it simply, to amass a huge userbase and to keep users on their site for as long as possible.

### Digital Gold

Advertisements became the new gold of the digital world, a new gold rush for companies to exploit. This article isnt about the hostile nature of the web though. If you're on gemini chances are you already know that song and dance. Instead, this is about how those companies shaped the nature of online social interation as a whole to be as dopamine inducing and attention retaining as possible. How even the smallest of smol communities are dealing with that addictive process. 

# Same Devil, Different Disguise

Many FOSS alternatives and lightweight front ends to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Youtube ect have come up over the years. The Fediverse and all its components like Mastadon are perfect examples of trying to create decentralized versions copying the same processes of interactions the conglomerations developed to keep us hooked. Even if its more privacy respecting, Its still just replacing one devil with another. 

Websites have trained us to streamline our thoughts, ideas, and discussions into bite size, easily writable and digestable chunks through a sterile, efficent pipeline. Even if we decentralize that process, it doesnt change how it exploits our social impulses. The constant desire to check for news and see if someone interacted with you is the core problem. 

That idea has permeated even the smol communities who should oppose it idealogically. "Micro-blogs" or "Tiny-logs" or whatever you want to call them. Conceptually, Its like a stripped down version of tweets. They are often seen as a "replacement" outlet for twitter. Some people even try to implement comments and likes and whatnot. Trying to fit old habits into new formats. 

Many geminauts have made it their mission to turn the internet back into a functional tool by limiting their usage intentionally. The "Offline First" Movement as they like to call it. A call back to computing minimalism.

# An Argument Against Blurbs

I want to argue that we should not be looking for alternative copycat formats to these kinds of services, we should see them as the disengenuous, uncreative and impersonally mechanical abominations of journaling they are. They are artifacts of an addictive format that wormed its way into manys subconcious to exploit our attention. Public writings should be refined, thought out reflections of humanity. They should have some amount of substinance or at least entertainment value.

## An Argument For Articles

Instead, Effort should be turned towards creating proper writing pieces. Writing about topics that actually mean something to you, personal feelings, niche hobbies, plans for life. Writings can be as much art as paintings. It requires concentration, practice, and refinement to build skill. In return for all that effort, at the end is something worth reading. A piece of writing that means something personal. 

Yes Its alot more effort but at the end you create something intricate which people may actually derive some value from. I only post a couple times a month maybe, because I want to write about things worth writing and reading about.

# The Writing Process

It takes time. Sometimes weeks to develop a full article in between long breaks. Sometimes it takes a few hours. I start with one topic and it can completely derail into another completely unexpected topic. Half an hour can be spent reworking a single paragraph over and over only to scrap it completely. That is the process of writing, the iterative nature of an idea sprawling out and touching other ideas. Theres a quote about writers not knowing what theyre really writing about until theyre half way done.

## A Plea To Fellow Smol Creators

Like it or not, we are authors. In a text-only format, there is no other choice but to be. Sure, you can share photography, music, videos even through text. However, thats secondary to text itself. Language takes center stage.

The only choice is how we present our writing, our ideas, our creations. A choice to present them as their best selves, or as anything but. All I ask is that you take more time to say what you want to say, and make it worth reading. Put something original, personal, or entertaining out there. Its your capsule, so make it your own.

# How To Share 

The only justification for the microblurbs are that they make it easy to share things to wide audiences. One person sharing a link with 10 others and some of them sharing and so on. Have you ever heard of 6 degrees of seperation? If you want to talk to ANYONE else in the world, you only have to talk to at most 6 other people to get to them. How accurate that theory is can be debated, but its a powerful idea none the less. 

Old tride and true technologies like RSS, webrings, and good old fashion url list can come to the rescue. All it takes is sharing your favorite links in a list for them to be discovered by someone, a keyword here, a link there makes the net go. Content, Links, and indexes are like the nets life blood. If you find something worthy of note, share it for others to find.

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