🔖 Bookmarked The luxury of opting out of digital noise · Woman. Legend.Blog http://blog.vickiboykis.com/2019/04/25/digital-noise/
Leaving the mess behind
I ended up leaving a bunch of my meetup groups and networking events and their respective Discords, and also decided to take down my studio streaming setup, because they were all wearing on my mental health. I want to get back to working on stuff because I want to, not because I feel obligated to “grow my audience” or whatever. My fun activities were starting to be less about fun and more about my failure to get any sort of cachet, and something had to give. And I didn’t want that “something” to be the things I enjoy doing.
It’s totally fine to want to do things, but it’s important to realize why you’re doing things, and be willing to course-correct when you realize that those things are getting in the way of the intended purpose.
Reblob!
Reblob!:
It’s been a while since I’ve worked on IndieWeb stuff, but I finally got around to releasing an extremely preliminary version of reblob, a little commandline thingus to make this stuff easier. Eventually I’ll also have a server-based version here, at least as an example.
Of course this is the first entry I’ve written actually using it. Lots of rough edges but whatever!
About to see Avengers! If this gets resolved by Cap and Thanos realizing their moms are both named Martha, so help me...
Chris Aldrich mentioned it was his #indieweb anniversary today, which made me wonder when I first encountered indieweb. Turns out it was six years ago! I remember being excited about the idea of federated comments. I had no idea I would be getting involved with the community for years to come, though. In that time, I've organized some meetups, traveled to several IndieWebCamps, and even co-organized an IndieWebCamp. I've met a lot of great people through it all and have had a lot of fun. I've made some good improvements to my site and learned things that have helped my professional web work, too.
You should join us! Check out indieweb.org, say hello in the chat, and join us at the IndieWeb Summit this June in Portland.
Bossanova Ballroom
Venue walkthrough
Finally freed my @Flickr account from Yahoo!
I don't know exactly why, but this makes me way happier to keep paying for Flickr now.
Migrate your account here: https://identity.flickr.com/migration
I don't know exactly why, but this makes me way happier to keep paying for Flickr now.
Migrate your account here: https://identity.flickr.com/migration
ICANN seeking comments regarding gTLD pricing deregulation
From Namecheap’s blog:
Imagine if next year you had to pay 10 times as much to renew your domain name as you paid this year. Based on an action proposed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), price caps could be removed on several top level domains, which could significantly increase the price of domains.
[…]
ICANN’s current contract with Public Interest Registry (PIR), the group that runs the .org domain name, lets PIR increase the wholesale price of .org domains by 10% a year.
That’s a lot, but at least it’s capped.
Now ICANN is proposing extending the contract to operate .org but letting PIR set whatever prices it wants. Rather than a 10% increase to renew your domain next year, it could suddenly start charging registrars like Namecheap 100 times as much. Registrars would have no choice but to pass these charges on to customers.
This actually affects .biz and .info as well as .org; you might notice that this website is on a .biz domain, so it affects me. I also have an .org site that would also be impacted. And there are so many other .org sites out there which are run by non-profits or individuals who do things for reasons other than pure profit.
With Jonathan away, it’s time for you to play! Can you solve the mysterious Facebook comment thread in this week’s We Have to Ask Podcast?
Tiny cocktails and tiny cameras
Only two months until IndieWeb Summit in Portland!
📅 June 29-30, 2019
📌 Portland, Oregon
🎟 https://2019.indieweb.org/summit
We even have a travel assistance program this year, so if you're on the fence about coming because of the cost, please take a look!
https://2019.indieweb.org/summit#travel-assistance
📅 June 29-30, 2019
📌 Portland, Oregon
🎟 https://2019.indieweb.org/summit
We even have a travel assistance program this year, so if you're on the fence about coming because of the cost, please take a look!
https://2019.indieweb.org/summit#travel-assistance
The commoditization of free time
Once upon a time, people would fill their spare time with hobbies, things they do because they enjoy doing it. They could be passive, like watching TV, or they could be active, like knitting or playing piano, or they could even be a side gig for extra income, like woodworking or painting.
When the Internet came about that made for many more varieties of things that people could do for their spare-time hobbies. They could make weird little videos for YouTube or they could record music and produce albums that other people could listen to (and maybe even buy), or they could stream their video game playing to hang out with others or to compete online.
Somewhere along the line, as a society we seem to have decided that all of those activities must be done as a source of income. You can’t just “make videos on YouTube” or “stream on Twitch,” you are expected to become “a YouTuber” or “a Twitch streamer.” If you make things as a hobby it’s expected that you set up an Etsy store to sell them online; if you collect books or figurines or old video games it’s for making a collection you can sell on eBay. If you record music and put it online you have to put it on all the streaming services and market yourself to make it worth your while, because otherwise how will anyone discover it? Oh, you want your friends to listen to it? Well they’re all using Spotify now, and they’re only going to listen if The Algorithm tells them to.
If you’re not spending all your time doing marketing or sales or producing Content for the Content Gods you are Doing It Wrong.
Every time you post a video to YouTube it goads you about how far you are from monetization. Every time you do a Twitch stream it follows up with an email about how far you are from making Affiliate. I don’t know what Affiliates get after their streams – probably something about their monetization stats or how far they are from Partner or something. I don’t know. I don’t think I care. But whenever I attend the local Twitch streamers meetup, invariably all of the discussion revolves around how recently everyone got Affiliate, or how far away everyone is, and how sad it is that I’ve been streaming on and off for years and don’t have it yet and I have got to Find My Audience. It feels like a cult.