This morning I noticed something. I noticed that there appears to be more utilitarianism on the web. I noticed that Wordpress now quantifies follower growth, engagement and more and whilst some people love it, it fills me with dread.
It fills me with dread because seeing your numbers go down is depressing, whereas seeing your numbers go up is uplifting. For me, blogging isn’t about those metrics. It’s about writing and sharing ideas, and seeing a steady number of visits. I don’t want my blog to be quantified too deeply, because then the absurdity of blogging becomes apparent.
With regards to utilitarianism on the fediverse, I saw several posts this morning that smacked of disingenuous utilitarian logic, rather than conversational engagement. Remember, we came to the fediverse to find conversations. So far I see fewer and fewer of them. I see so few that I disengage for days at a time now. I dropped Threads, and I rarely look at Bluesky because there is little to no ROI.
To a large extent the Fediverse is the same. The paradox is that if I go for a run, or a bike ride, I get 20 to 30 likes, whereas if I post to Facebook, the Fediverse or Instagram I get two. I’m not here for the likes. I’m here for the conversations.
When I see influencer types on the Fediverse I block them. My fear is that the honeymoon period for the Fediverse is over. With the arrival of influencers, we really are better off in niche communities that meet in person, and keep things alive between meetups online.
This isn’t “yet another post about social media”. I think we’re in the post social media age. I think we’re now in the ubiquitous online community age. From cycling groups, to theatre groups, to running groups, and hiking groups, and board game groups and the list goes on.
I believe that the era of broad social sites is being replaced by niche communities. GoSocial isn’t my scene, but it’s a community of communities on Whatsapp, without touching Facebook, Instagram and other ‘legacy’ platforms. I know a running club that is whatsapp only, and another that is spread across two or three platforms.
I think we are in a healthy era now. In theory now, more than ever federated networks make more sense, if we focus on personal connections, rather than influencer broadcasts.