Well, after coming home from Christmas in the Houston area I got sicker. I went to the urgent care place and was tested, and I have the flu. That would explain the 101.6 temperature. They started me on Tamiflu. Today, 2 days later, I am feeling somewhat better but still shitty. I think I did have a sinus infection, and probably still do, and it opened the door to the flu. That can happen, right?
I’ve had all sorts of ideas of long blog posts to write, about different things that few but me care about, but have not had the energy to really organize my thoughts. I am taking notes.
The following disorganized rant was composed while hacking up mucus.
Been talking to my friend Tony Gale, freestyle skateboarder supreme, about various issues of the freestyle skateboarding scene and how it is presented and organized online. He and a few (meaning me) other enlightened humanoids wish to take it AWAY from social media, and re-center it on actual websites that are not owned by corporate scumbags. I support this. I think this will be difficult to pull off, but excising the social media cancer from freestyle is a surgery that must happen.
I have been as active as most on social media since it started gaining a foothold. I had no special enlightenment. It just seemed like a fun way to share skateboarding. But over the last 15 years we have simply fed the beast too much, and now it is out of control. From deciding what you see on your timeline, to tracking what you do, to sending your info to third parties you don’t even know, it is all 100% bullshit.
Edit: Conforming to corporate overlords and bending over like submissive humps for them is EXACTLY what skateboarders are not supposed to do. Everyone needs to get the corporate dicks out of their mouths.
I feel like we need a set of webpages for freestyle skateboarders (or skateboarders in general) to clearly explain the options.
This is not really complicated. Here is where we might start.
- RSS feeds — allow you to subscribe to any fucking site that has an RSS feed. You can get the feed on a reader on any device you have. It strips out all the fucking advertising and bullshit code too! This blog, for example, has an RSS feed. With modern RSS readers you don’t even have to know the feed address. Just type in the URL and reader will find it for you. If you are too dumb to read a short article about RSS, just look it up on YouTube and have some hipster explain it to you. I’m not providing all the links here because I can’t spoon feed y’all everything!
- If a site has no RSS feed (like IG, FB, TT, or whatever) then it is beneath your notice. Fuck them.
- iCal — you can subscribe to calendars and have them show up on YOUR calendar. You do know what a calendar is, right? There is approximately a 100% chance you have one on the phone in your pocket.
- Fediverse – look it up. I’ll do a post about it soon-ish. I have the flu right now and I really can’t muster the energy to solve all the problems.
Folks, the hard truth is that we handed our valuable identities and cool shit over to the big silos in exchange for convenience. I too am guilty. GUILTY. But now they have made us their bitches, and it is time to not be the bitches anymore.
There are only a few reasons I can think of for continuing to give them your life…
- You haven’t thought this through – start thinking
- You are dumb – I have no solution for this
- You don’t care – start caring
- You enjoy the narcissism and dopamine hits – you are an addict and need to stop
- You are running a business and use, for instance, Instagram, to market your stuff. This is valid. You can start helping by transitioning to other ways of doing things – websites, RSS, Fediverse. Here’s an example. If you have a company and an IG page, when you post something to IG, post that video to your website too! Not connected to IG. Put it in the blog section of your site so we can subscribe to it. If you post a clip on IG, then post a really nice long clip ONLY on your website. Seriously, no one is buying your shit from IG. You have to get them to your site.
More later…
Lord Bob
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