How are you staying in touch?
Hi everyone!
Ice-breaker moment. If I’m in a crowded and very loud place meeting strangers for the first time, if they don’t hear my name the first time, I usually say “LIKE THE QUICHE!” and they always nod in understanding. Maybe they know, maybe they think I’m odd. Do you have a mnemonic for your name?
OMG TWITTER
I don’t know if you’ve been following the chaos at Twitter, but one of the things that hit home for me is the complete splintering of social media for me over the past 2 years. I used to love it. I even got an interview out of a connection with a person I met at a conference. But it’s a time suck although there are some interesting people on there.
I’m not sure if you know it but in 2019 I participated in the Glass Room project. It was eye-opening, and I met a group of other people that felt the same way I did about the way tech was heading and that things needed to change. Here’s a sample of something from the “Data Detox Kit” I helped run a workshop for at the Glass Room…
My Personal Social Network Summaries
Mastodon - I’ve been a member for 4 days. A bit quiet and polite but has potential. @lorrainesawicki@vis.social
Twitter - Love/Hate relationship with it since 2007. No idea what’s next for it! Should I stay or should I go?
TikTok - Some people love it but interestingly it’s completely different in China; more educational there for children and even has a time limit! I don’t have an account because I’m trying to not just scroll in an addicted fashion for hours per week.
Reddit - Similar to Twitter as a wild west of commenting and opinions. I carefully lurk in a few channels and even occasionally post, but for the most part read the news articles posted and glance at some of the comments.
Facebook - I deleted it because of the bad vibes I got after using it and the lack of privacy.
Instagram - I also deleted it because of the bad vibes, bots and bad press about it being awful for teenage girls
Discord - Chaotic conversations on topics I care about or are curious learning about more.
Slack - I participate in a few communities occasionally but don’t want to commit to it too much. It’s so hard to find information from more than a day ago if the channels are hopping.
LinkedIn - I have so many followers! Maybe I will post more now that I don’t know what’s happening with Twitter. I’ll log in more when I figure out what my true purpose is for spending time on there.
and a final note on photography…
Unsplash
After viewing other people’s Substacks for the past few months, I’ve seen some people form some promising relationships with other artists. I think that’s wonderful! I don’t know at this point if there’s a barter system going on or if the artists are getting paid. But I also see a lot of photographs from unsplash. I was curious about unsplash and found this article about a photographer that used it for two years - and how not only did the artist not make any new business contacts or money from it, someone actually took their open-source photo, copied it, and is now selling it on adobe stock!