Notices by Mr. Encyclopedia (mrencyclopedia@retro.pizza)

@thomasfuchs What's it called when you just edit prod files on the fly because it's just your tiny personal site and you're too out of touch and disorganized to operate any kind of web dev workflow.

@erincandescent @lori A site that definitely is in no danger of not persisting long-term.

@heatdeath The internet used to be something you had to sit down in one place to use and you could get up and walk away from the internet whenever you wanted.

But what content could possibly be the delight of so many very real people?

looks good to me

Wake up babe new genders just dropped

But the underlying problem still remains: The Internet is no longer a place for people to share themselves. Instead it's gradually becoming something to passively enjoy as algorithms feed you content to keep you engaged. Where that content comes from and who makes it is becoming less and less important, because there's no direct line from content creation to corporate profits.

Recently a document came out showing that Automattic, the company that currently owns Tumblr, failed to meet their expectations for revitalizing the site. I could point out how I think their strategy was flawed, but there's an underlying problem that I think is more interesting.

Tumblr launched in 2007, during the blog boom. Folks believed the thing you did online was write and talk about yourself. It doesn't have to be interesting, or insightful, it could just be a little diary about your life that others could see if they wanted to.

This is why in 2006 when Twitter launched, people were amused by it. What am I supposed to do with 140 characters? Talk about my lunch?

Eventually the answer became clear: No, you don't tweet about your lunch. You don't talk about your boring day. You shut up and consume the content of other people who are more interesting than you. It became clear that only a tiny fraction of people produce the majority of content on social media, and the rest are there to watch.

Sites like Instagram and TikTok are successful because they focus on this by making sure the watchers always have an endless stream of content to consume.

This is not how Tumblr was conceived, but it is what their attempts to revitalize it focused on. They tried to make Tumblr a place for people to come consume content, but that's not how Tumblr has ever worked. How do most people see Tumblr? Screenshots shared on other social media sites. Tumblr is for the weirdos who want to make things and collaborate. The quintessential Tumblr post is a witty addition to someone else.

I think all the things that Tumblr did in an attempt to boost usage, and all the missteps Tumblr has made over the years, break down to making decisions to boost consumption over creation. They favored folks coming to scroll through a "for you" page, and neglected the people who actually put their creativity on display.

One interesting feature of RSS that people don't talk about is accessibility.
If your site has RSS, people can view and interact with your site via an RSS reader, which may include accessibility features that your site does not.
For instance, maybe the RSS reader has a dark mode that your website lacks.

Okay time to post a bunch of memes until you all tell me to shut up

This feels more true every day

What did he mean by this

These are all just pictures that I have collected because I personally find amusing, like this picture of Tennessee state Rep. Kent Calfee sucking on a Hershey's syrup bottle.

This is one of my favorites.

The struggle is real

Checks out