Starting afresh

Aka welcome to my new substack

I've long been unhappy with social media. In fact, the last post on my defunct blog was from 2016, back when I had deactivated my Facebook account.

That particular social media cleanse lasted all of six months, as I went back to Facebook a few months into 2017. A lot of us who are in the same cyclical boat have been saying for years that we keep going back because we want the authentic snippets of our friends’ lives and thoughts, but we hate the algorithmic shuffling and lack of choice. So we quit or take a break every time after sustaining a few months of shuffled drivel.

In recent years, the forced shuffling and lack of choice has been exacerbated by two new trends that have made social media practically unusable.

The first is the proliferation of reels and the rise of content creators. I don't think there is enough oxyacetylene flame in the world to sterilise social media of this particular strain of fecal contamination.

The second is the rise of AI content. I'm not bothered as much by the creepy AI images. Yes, a lot of gullible people seem to be fooled by them, but they are easy enough to identify and ignore. What really bothers me is the proliferation of bots using chatgpt-like capabilities to insert themselves into comments and effectively troll all discourse.

I made a recent post on Facebook that I'd like to go back to my blog for a return to long-form writing. A friend suggested trying out substack. I'd heard of the platform tangentially, and had assumed it was primarily for people who wanted to monetise their writing via the subscription model. But a closer look proved I was mistaken, and that a lot of serious writing that used to be the hallmark of the blogosphere of the early 2000s that I loved seems to have migrated to substack. There’s enough open content that you could either subscribe to without payment, or read directly on the platform.

I've created this substack to try out the platform, but I'm still looking around and getting a feel for it. If I find that enough of my old blogospheric friends, and enough of the serious kinds of deep thinkers and writers that I used to enjoy reading in the past are here now, I'll stick around. Otherwise, there's always my old blog to return to.

I've already discovered a few of my old friends like Dave, Chris, and Beth over here. I'm sure there are more of them that I’ll discover as I look around. If you have a substack, give me the link. Either here in the comments, or email me - arvindsays (at) protonmail (dot) com.

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