So, uh… how’s the view? Can you see the fire burning brightly? Cause that fire was created by a man-child and god, that fire is burning brightly.
It’s no new news that with that billionaire’s crisis of not being funny, Twitter was brought for way too much money and is already spiraling into its demise. Of course, like my whole thing with Tumblr, I’m gonna stay on the ship until it sinks fully, why? Well other than my knowing people who are only on Twitter, most sites that are being propped up as “alternatives” aren’t really alternatives, they’re their own thing and Twitter also has its own thing that can’t be replicated normally.
So, I’m gonna run down what made Twitter special and the other sites that make them different and special as well.
The thing with Twitter is that, it was highly general. It wasn’t a site just for art or just for fandoms or just for communicating with friends and family. It was a site that quite literally a lot of people used. Sure, you can dedicate your account to art or programming or fandom or whatever niche you want, but when you’re making posts, you’re throwing them out into the void so that someone can potentially see it.
It’s kinda why I, for the lack of a better term, don’t really want Twitter to die. I mean, there’s a lot I hate about it don’t get me started, but it was a place where you could legitimately become popular enough to make money off of the things you create, of course, that kinda the double-edged sword of social media, where everything is basically built off of virality. So many people rely on the popularity they have on Twitter to make a living, not only through funny posts, but also that’s where someone’s connections would be, being a freelancer was generally easier with social media on the internet, not entirely, if that were true I wouldn’t be worrying about job shit right now, but it was easier to have a post become viral and for it to kickstart something that could be beneficial to your well being.
Of course, that’s also ignoring all the bad shit Twitter has, like incentivizing flame wars because you can’t articulate your opinion very well with the strict as fuck character count, or the fact that since everyone is using Twitter, so is a fuck ton of brands and oh boy I sure do love being advertised to in a snarky manner every 5 minutes, that definitely doesn’t make me dead inside.
But yeah, honestly Twitter’s big thing was that everyone is using it, of course, that might change because yeah jesus fucking christ have just keep up with the Twitter news and you’ll feel depressed.
But, with Twitter dying, people have been suggesting new places to go to in case shit goes south.
How weird it is to see Tumblr somehow pull a 180. One moment the site is mostly abandoned because tits were banned, the next tits are unbanned but not sex because Apple breaths down their neck. It’s interesting to see how much the site changed from my start in 2015, the bannings in 2018, and the somewhat revival in 2022. It seems that Staff generally is listening to people nowadays and things are being improved, but like, idk stuff just kinda feels different from before the ban.
Like, sharing links on tumblr is different now, including redirecting to a standardized blog setting, but also adding metadata tracking, it just kinda, feels like something is off with that.
There’s also how the userbase changed, being more chilled out n stuff, that one’s honestly kinda good.
But yeah, it’s probably the closest to being similar to Tumblr in the fact that a lot of people use it, not as much as Twitter, but people are using it. Although, it really can’t replace Twitter either.
It’s just a kind of thing where Tumblr’s vibe is just kinda incompatible with Twitter’s vibe, Likes are discouraged because it doesn’t really spread posts, having an empty uncustomized blog is discouraged because people will think you’re a bot, there’s a proper blacklist and you can actually say words like kill without having to
It’s still hard to really describe the differences for social media sites for me, because while I can say some differences, I can’t really communicate the real vibes of each platform other than, “You just kinda know the vibes when you’ve been there long enough”.
Speaking of not really knowing things.
I’m gonna be real, I had hope for Pillowfort in the beginning, but honestly I don’t really care about it anymore, it had some sketchy shit in it’s content policy and that kinda made me go “yeah no” and I got rid of my account. I remember it being meh. Also, it’s still either 5 bucks or invite only, which like, yeah that’s not really good for getting yourself out there.
Oh now here’s the real bullshit, in that I kinda don’t like Mastodon. Yes yes I know how federated networks and blah blah blah, but it just kinda goes back to how Twitter had everyone. With Mastodon, it feels isolating, I know I can find other people by either looking them up or looking at the global timeline, but it just feels isolating to use, like I’m using a discord server more than a social media site. Plus, it’s got that double edged sword of it being user managed, which in my experience, hasn’t really ended well, something can just, poof out of existence because of some beef or hacking.
There’s also how I kinda just don’t like how long usernames are and the fact that someone else can take @lilpaladin1 because it’s on a different instance, or how whenever I follow someone on a different instance, their old posts don’t get shown. Overall, it feels more like a Discord social media hybrid more than a proper social media, and no matter how wrong I am when it comes to how the fediverse works, I just, I just don’t like it. Simple as that.
Maybe when Mastodon instances get filled with a bunch of people my tune will change, but idk I just don’t really feel anything with Mastodon.
Let’s just get this one over with quickly, honestly even if Twitter isn’t going to die, just get one if you’re an artist, always back up your stuff somewhere so people can see it if something goes wrong.
The reason why I don’t really consider this a true replacement is kinda obvious for the fact that it’s not really social media, it’s a gallery, which is tailored for artists and people who like art, which is just kinda a niche, a big one, but not on the scale of an entire social media site. So don’t make it a main thing, but definitely have one as a backup for your art.
It was kinda obvious that since this one was on my homepage, I liked this one the most out of he ones I tried out.
Seeing posts that mess around with CSS is just really fun, like it brings back a sense of times gone by with the internet where people just kinda dicked around in a text editor making a bunch of random webpages, kinda like mixing the old web with the current web, which is fun.
Plus it seems to be a site that people are actually joining and using, for a while it was just kinda fine, but with this latest wave of people migrating/making back ups to other social media sites, it seems like on my end that more people are just using the site, which is also fun.
It also helps that the site really isn’t as gamified as other sites, only real number you see, both as a poster and a viewer, is the amount of comments a post gets, not really incentivising popularity, which can lead into a double edged sword thing where it could be harder to gauge if you can do freelance work, but honestly the calmer vibe makes up for that.
Overall, I’ve had a much better time using Cohost than other social media sites, and I do hope that it lives on for a long time.
This one is more of how I post stuff. With Twitter, I used it for like, small bursts of stuff, which I could probably do with Cohost, but ehhhhhh, I don’t really feel like it. I thought about using it more in an update fashion, where I post some updates and stuff there, but also I have this blog where I could also do that.
It’s kinda interesting to think about because Twitter’s niche was quick posts and Tumblr’s and Cohost’s are for more longer posts, while still being able to do short posts obviously.
I think what I’m gonna do is that if I have something long (like this post), it’s going to be a blog post, if it’s not really that long or short that’s an update, it’ll probably go on Cohost, and if it’s just kinda short, it’s gonna go on Twitter (or Cohost again if Twitter acutally dies). How I determine this is just kinda whatever, how it feels, ya know?
But, to circle back to the beginning, as much as I kept saying Twitter’s dying, I kinda have a suspicion that it’s not really going to die any time soon. It’s going to get a lot more annoying to use, but it’s just kinda… eh, I’m sure it’ll be fine for a while, maybe it’ll get sold to another billionaire or something and this cycle repeats again.
And just as I type this out that fucker wants to turn Twitter into a subscription Something Awful… oh boy.