Do I Know You?
I was reading Deadly Headshot's toot on Christmas day, and it got me thinking about Object Permanence and social media.
The funny thing is, I can remember conversations I had on IRC in the late 1990s, but there are many people I greatly enjoyed conversing with on the Fediverse just a couple years ago that have either simply disappeared (either deleted their account or simply don't post/reply anymore), or just don't show up in my "orbit" anymore.
All too often, I completely lose track of who I'm talking to, being enthralled in the conversation itself and not mindful of the individual identity of my conversant. This is exacerbated by the fact that I'm often using a command-line Fediverse client which only shows users' avatars when requested, and in a separate image viewer program.
I think the best advice I can give to someone concerned about their permanence in people's minds online would be to use a simple-but-memorable avatar/profile pic (and not change it), and to have a unique and memorable user name. Thinking of the avatars I find most memorable, some are basically geometric (but unique), some are images of unique faces (one I'm thinking of is a black-and-white halftoned image of a vampire lady), some are custom clip-art, like a certain fellow who strongly resembles an avocado. The ones that I often get confused with other people are the ones that are either extremely simple logos or geometric shapes, or simple portraits. Most faces just aren't that memorable, sorry. ^__^
My Every Day Carry, Part V: What's on My Phone?
In Part IV, I discussed wristwatches. In this article, I'm jumping back into my pocket, so to speak, with a look at what's on my phone itself.
This was a rather exhausting article to write, because I have a lot of apps on my phone. I have even been ridiculed …
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The Joy of Bespoke Hashtags
In Part II, I described the protective function of hashtags. I will now delve into a more entertaining aspect of how they can be used.
Whenever I share a blog post I've just written on the fediverse, I always use the hashtag #rlDaneWriting. It's an easy way for me to …
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Hashtags, Part II: Global Search and the Right to Not Be Discovered
In Part I, I spoke humorously on the linguistic value of hashtags. I'd like to now go over why hashtags are useful for search on the Fediverse, and why global search is a bad idea.
Reply guys. That's it. End of blog p— Oh okay, okay!
I've noticed that there …
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Hashtags are Poetry
'Nuff said. End of blog post.
Ok, well...
The funny thing about hashtags on the Fediverse is that they're actually needed, and serve a very similar purpose to hashtags on Twitter (In Pace Requiescat).
When hashtags were first developed, Twitter had no search function (or built-in RTs, or images, for …
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The Toxicity Dance
There's been some kerfuffle today on the fediverse over the issue of toxicity in the Linux and Open Source community. "Toxic" is one of those trigger words that immediately gets fingers a-pointing. The great irony is that just to mention the word "toxic" can in itself be a toxic statement …
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On the Fediverse and FediFriends
You may have seen me mention The Fediverse or "FediFriends" in previous posts. Now, I anticipate that 100% of my readers are already in the Fediverse (or within a rounding error of 100% 😄), but just in case someone doesn't know, the following is a succinct description and discussion of the …
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Time for a new "Geek Code"!
I was watching yesterday's video from The Linux Cast on PeerTube, and I really liked how he broke down the various (arche)types of Linux users into seven categories:
- "The Greybeards" - those who have used Linux since the early days, and have a lot of experience. The Linux Gandalfs.
- "I …
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The Linux Last Mile Problem
I was watching The Linux Experiment's latest video entitled "Sometimes, I get tired of Linux," and I realized how similar the issues that he mentioned are to the classic "Last Mile Problem."
First of all, mad props to folks like Nick (a.k.a. "The Linux Experiment"), Veronica Explains, The …
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"But my friends aren't on there!"
Promoting ethical alternatives to unethical social media
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