My Social Media Top Three
Along with many others over the past few years, I chose to separate myself from larger social media platforms; specifically Meta, TikTok, Xitter, and more recently Pinterest (does Pinterest count as social media?).
TikTok got deleted the exact moment they published their big thank you to a certain spray-tanned clown for "saving" them from being shut down. Meta followed not long after due to the onslaught of AI implementation and a massive rollback of their moderation policies, which further reduced protections for minoritized populations from hate-speech. I never used Xitter much, but that one was deleted the moment Musty took control. Pinterest was due to a fairly recent refusal to make any attempt at curbing AI images.
These were really the only social media platforms I used, aside from BlueSky, and I don't miss them in the slightest. If anything, I spend less time arguing with bad-faith idiots on the internet than ever1, meaning the time I do spend on the internet is much more enjoyable.
So I thought I'd share the top three sites I spend most of my time on these days and why I enjoy using them.
#3. BlueSky
I'm spending less time on BlueSky than I used to, mostly because of news fatigue. But the people I follow and interact with there are mostly authors, artists, and independent journalists whose work I admire, plus a handful of local and state politicians, so my feed is typically hyper-relevant to my interests. No algorithm and the ability to hide or mute individual posts as opposed to whole accounts means I only see what I want to 95% of the time, with the remaining 5% easily solvable with my merciless "hide, mute, or block on sight" policy.\
"Echo chamber" blah blah blah fuck off, life is too short to waste my precious time on people who think spewing their rotten-hearted bigotry is equivalent to debating the best paint color for a living room. I have to deal with this enough in real life, I do not need other people's nastiness encroaching on my personal internet fun-time.
#2. Bear Blog!
I'm just starting to branch out into replying to people's posts via e-mail or a RE: post, but I'm already enjoying this platform so much more than any other blogging or social site I've ever encountered. I still have my old WordPress account, since I'm slacking on transferring my reviews over, but I haven't actually posted there since making the switch. And I'm writing more than I ever did, too.
But what could possibly take the number 1 spot if not the very platform I'm posting on?
#1. Pagebound, bitches
1/4 book tracker and 3/4 book forum, Pagebound is the best replacement for Bezos-owned GoodReads and AI-infected StoryGraph I've yet to find. It's run exclusively and by a full-time two-person dev team, which makes its functionality even more impressive. The main feature of Pagebound are the dedicated forums for every single book; I'm discussing my reading with more people than I ever did on GoodReads. It allows users to basically live-blog their reading experience and it's so awesome to see people freaking out over the same parts of a book that I am.
The developer's aim is NOT actually to be a GoodReads replacement, but something altogether different: a true Book Community. So, it doesn't have features like dedicated new-releases feeds, but the users themselves have that covered, creating themed or general Lists of upcoming books. There are themed Quests with cute badges to earn, and reviewers can select up to three emojis to represent the book, which is a fun feature. Starred reviews can also be broken down into four different categories in addition to an overall rating: enjoyment, quality, characters, and plot.
But the best part about Pagebound is the community. I have yet to witness any sort of explosive infighting. With the exception of a handful of trolls, disingenuous commenters, or just plain rudeness, everyone is so respectful and open-minded. It really is a community where people just love to read. No one is there to tear down each other, or review bomb authors they've got beef with. Differences of opinion are dealt with respectfully, and even the couple of nasties that made their way through were handled with much more patience and good intent from the users than I would expect anywhere else.
If you're into reading, I hope you'll give Pagebound a try!
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which is not to say that I don't still waste time arguing with bad-faith idiots on the internet like a fucking fool, just significantly LESS time.↩