It’s been a year since I wrote Beautiful Twitter Sunsets, and roughly a year since the ownership and management change over on Twitter-that-was, and after something like 13 years on that site (and who knows how many words written) I have deleted my account. My accounts, actually, I had more than one. The alts rarely updated but one was “Available Quests”, a handle that posted D&D, table-top appropriate quests like some kind of guild job board and the other was “Timeline Operations”, a customer service account for time travelers stuck in this awful splinter timeline. TimelineOps was always a fun character to step into and the jokes mostly wrote themselves as I interacted with people.

Anyway, both of those and the main account deleted.

Like everyone else, I am waiting to see what comes next. Mastodon is probably the technical (and tech) leader in this race but has a horrible brand, a fractured user base, and something of a reputation among the folks who haven’t used it yet. The ActivityPub protocol is the key jewel in Mastodon’s potential social media crown, but we’re still waiting for another major player to implement it [Tumblr, maybe?] or for someone to build a new app and website from scratch that will federate with Masto and the rest using ActivityPub, while also resonating enough with users that it gains traction.

The other ‘open’ option that is 1. not open, 2. wholly owned by a private company, and 3. actually gaining some mindshare out there is Bluesky. Bluesky, or bsky.app, is using the AT Protocol (yes, they capitalize it even though you’re supposed to say “at protocol”, not sound out “A. T.”) which is similar to ActivityPub in that it will allow different platforms to cross post and ‘federate’ and let you take your online social presence with you to whichever platform you’d prefer (that uses the AT Protocol). Except that the AT doesn’t connect to anything and no one else is using it. Bluesky is succeeding where a number of other platforms ain’t by basically looking like and acting almost exactly like twitter from, say, 2017 while also restricting access behind invite codes while they go through their “Beta”. The first batch of invites went out to journalists and a few other heavy hitters so they’ve managed to make a site that you’d want to read with accounts that you’d probably like to follow and then immediately closed the door to everyone, only opening it a crack.

It was just six weeks ago that Bluesky hit a million users, despite technically being around since 2019. It could probably grow to ten times that size in another six weeks if they opened the door to everyone, but the folks that run Bluesky are being very careful. Users are great but users are also the worst thing about a lot of social media.

If you go to the bottom of this web page you’ll find links to my accounts on both of these new platforms¹. I’m spending more time right now on Bluesky and will probably be active there for the foreseeable. Though the social media I probably have more fun using is Tumblr, which is kind of hilarious since I was on Tumblr even before making a twitter account in 2010. Everything old is new again.

Twitter-that-was: You were awful, and then somehow over the past year you got worse. You will not be missed; mourned a little, maybe, because you were a part of our lives for quite a long time, but not missed.

There’s not a replacement yet. Like everyone else, I’m still waiting to see where we all land.

¹ The Links section is baked into the CMS and almost trivial to update, when I remember to update, so if you are reading this in 2 or 3 years time and we’re all on some new second-life VR/AR social media platform called StupidGoggles or TormentNexus or whatever, my account for the latest-greatest social media platform should be down there too.

When you’re young and there’s a whole world ahead of you, you can feel paralyzed by what you perceive as near infinite options. What do I choose?

Two or three decades on, though, you can feel trapped by your choices. How is it that a decision I made at 17 now seems like it has closed off half the world to me?

The truth, of course, is that we can always make new choices, but the wisdom (or “wisdom”, or scar tissue) of past experience means we know that choices have consequences. It’s not that we can’t make the same kind of leaps into the unknown that many of us were willing to take at 22, we just know the trade-offs and compromises that we’ll be making alongside that leap.

The trade-offs and compromises were always there, we just see them clearly now.

At 17, I was an idiot who thought he knew everything. At 22, I was an idiot who would admit he didn’t know everything but felt he had the tools to learn anything. At 44, I know I’m just an idiot.

I’d love to chuck it all, move out west, start over, and take the sort of leap of faith I should have made in ’96 or ’98. I’d love to go back to school. I’d love to start over in another part of the country, some place that feels new and full of opportunity (even though intellectually I know the frontier closed more than a century ago, ‘the west’ calls, especially places that vote bluer than here).

But I still have family, and a move like that would mean putting a continent between me and them. My parents are reaching an age where my proximity might matter.

That’s the last tie, though. I’m not following my life’s passion or anything with the current employment situation and while my metro area is fine, economically, I’m not a huge fan despite having been born here. It would take very little to dislodge me from this slightly uncomfortable rut. A job offer. A relationship. Hitting rock bottom a fourth time.

There are changes I can make anywhere; the living situation doesn’t matter, really. If I’m going to be a writer, I can write from anywhere. If I’m going to “go back to school” I can do so just as easily with a library card and internet connection, so long as I don’t have to have the paper (getting a new credential would be better, though, to be clear). I can make resolutions (annually, even) to be fitter, or more social, or more frugal, or better in whichever way.

Even now, I have 20 years or more of “work” or a “career” before I can reasonably expect to “retire” (sadly, I doubt I’ll be able to retire) and 20 years is a long ass time. Outside of any restrictions I place on myself, or the ties I willingly double the knots on, I could honestly try anything. I have a lot fewer obligations and restrictions than most people my age – no spouse, no kids, no job I love and just can’t leave.

A whole world, even.

With a whole world ahead of you, you can feel paralyzed by what you perceive as near infinite options. What do you choose?