2026-03-10 00:16:00
I've been on Bear for almost a year now, and have seen it grow and change. The one thing I'm glad hasn't changed is the generally anti-intolerance. And boy are the rightoids pissing and shitting and crying about it.
The post that sparked this all was a reply to Suliman's Our backyard is starting to stink, you probably know the one.
The replier made a big stink about "Waaahhh, people don't wike my dogshit opinions and they mawds awe buwwying me. So now I'm weaving!", which I just have one thing to say to that:
Good. Fucking. Riddance.
Rightoids and "center-right" (which is just rightoids without any self-awareness, or they know their political takes aren't getting them any bitches) seem to think that every space is for them, and when they get pushed back they start making it out like its a "witch hunt".
People are allowed to dislike your opinions, if you can't handle that go back to X where the rest of you fascist sympathizers belong.
The replier made the comment that Suliman might be "out of touch", which just reminds me of the simpsons meme of "Am I out of touch? No it's the children that are wrong".
Can Suliman come off as a bit extreme? Maybe, but considering the guy had to flee his home country because it was getting treated like a missile testing site for US, Britsh, French, Russian, and Iran military programs, can't say as I fucking blame him for not being sympathetic to your neoliberal, imperialist kowtowing.
I think the only thing I would "critique" Suliman of, that I think all of us in the left are guilty of, is that we do throw around things like "nazi" without adding the added context.
When Suliman said that one person's post "is straight out of the Nazi playbook", I think it would have helped for the added reasoning as to why. Not for the rightoids, I don't think you could hammer the point through their lead-thick skulls even if you wanted to. I think it's useful for the people who are on your side of things, but aren't as educated or can't see the full picture.
Suliman isn't a scary person, he's not a fucking Tasmanian devil that lashes out at anybody to the right of Marx. You can ask him why he feels the way he does he'll give you a pretty calm and measured response. I know this because I've also debated with him.
Anyway, I think giving that added education and context would be helpful for the more layman-left to actually have a greater understanding of things and not get left with their dick in their hand when a rightoid is even 1% more knowledgeable than you.
You've seen it, it's what makes pundits like Ben Shapiro get off so easy, they're not actually going against REAL debaters, they're going against 1st/2nd year undergrad students who's only experience in debate is internet arguments. That's why they get their shit kicked in when they debate someone who ACTUALLY can debate, because the debtater is a lot more well-informed and can puncture the VERY open holes in rightoid logic which tends to just fall into religious fundamentalism and ignorance.
The poster that Suliman was flaming mentioned how they've never been on 4chan or Shitter. As if that somehow exonerates them from parroting far-right propaganda. You might not THINK you're a Nazi, but when you start project personal issues onto some strawman then adding an extra sprinkle of conspiracy that paints YOU as the victim and that you're somehow special in your sense of reasoning and lover for law and order... people who can see the parallels of National Socialist talking points are gonna call you a Nazi (or at least say what you're saying comes from the Nazis). You aren't immune to spreading far-right propaganda, or any propaganda for that matter.
Mono caught strays from the poster (xenophobic is only a big word if you're illiterate) and basically starting wining about his post sparking witch hunts, a common mind killer for people too ignorant to figure out WHY their opinions are unpopular. His post wasn't even political really, people just got butthurt that people reserve the right to not expose themselves to your shit.
Just because you shared your opinion doesn't mean you can't be publicly ridiculed. People who masturbate to the 1st amendment seem to forget that it only applies to government persecution, you are not protected from people shitting on your shitty opinions.
If you can't handle the heat, stay out of the fucking kitchen.
If you want laissez-faire moderation, go on twitter, 4chan, or start a wix blog or something. The community does not have to coddle you or your sense of self importance.
Rightoids forget that their views aren't just unpopular in niche spaces online... they're unpopular in most of the world that isn't ran by blatant theocracies and dictatorships. American Center is European Right, think about that for a second as to why without hitting yourself with the instant mind-killer that the entire West is somehow delusional and you and your basement-dwelling homeboys with way too much interest in ancient Rome and WWII are the only sane one.
They'll also paint their own views as "not that extreme" in an attempt to normalize their ignorance and "both-sides bad" bullshit.
So let this be a little PSA. If you find yourself being "shadowbanned" by moderators (hell, even I had a post de-ranked some time back, and am fully prepared for this one to as well. You're not the only one, but guess what the post that got deranked was my most hostile post I've made to date... maybe take THAT into consideration?) and being critiqued by other members here, and start making a big stink on your blog about leaving rather than questioning your own ideas, remember this one thing...
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
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2026-03-09 08:35:05
i have a not so secret secret. i adore museum blogs, especially those of niche museums. enter the postal museum blog.
perhaps the reason i love mail is because my father was a postman, or that my first hobby (due to him) was stamp collecting. i love sending mail, and i love even more to receive it. i need to do it more, and this blog acts as a reminder of the magic of paper mail and postcards.
the postal museums blog is a calm and soothing place to learn about british postal history. it provides an endearing soft praise to everything postal, from postcards to the how, why, and who of their delivery. the blog itself is well curated and written providing a good mix of history and contemporary personal storytelling.
if i were in england (the homeland of my mother), this blog would be reason enough to inspire a visit. it is just so well done.
2026-03-09 05:23:00
Image by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash.
So I just wrote a blog post that I had assumed all of eight people were going to read. Turns out, that wasn't the case at all - it must have hit a nerve, hitting #1 on the BearBlog trending pages1, doing the numbers on Mastodon2, as well as encouraging a few folks to send emails (!), which is by far the coolest way of getting in touch. To think that someone sat down and took the time to grab the email address from the contact page and write a personal note - that's rad.
Now, I'm not saying this all to brag, but to illustrate a point, because: That same post on LinkedIn? Not as much of a success. Crickets, in fact. It got like six likes, zero comments, and nobody reached out. Isn't that odd?
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out why a post criticizing and prying apart the workings of algorithmic media may not have been doing well on LinkedIn. 🙂
If you haven't read the article, it essentially outlined the link between human psychology, engagement, and algorithmic media. The tl;dr:
The existing social media platforms - or legacy algorithmic media, as I like to call them - typically have the following hallmarks:
And yet: Even people who know all that, people who don't feel good about it, people who agree that the above is not right and that we should move to alternative platforms, often feel that they can’t leave. Why is that?
Part of why people are sticking around is that the platforms are still "working." I explicitly want to avoid the phrase "working as intended" here, as I think we need to differentiate between three different definitions of "working" in this context:
The legacy algorithmic media platforms often still “work” in the first two senses: In a technical sense, as well as for their operators (as otherwise they would already have been shut down). However, this can be true while the platform at the same time fails to serve users’ needs.
Enshittification used to, and should still have, consequences. Yes, even in the digital realm.
When MySpace got bought out and became even more cluttered and added ads, people left and flocked to Facebook, which, at the time, was ad-free and looked sleek and clean. When Internet Explorer kind of just... stopped innovating and adding new helpful features, people switched to Firefox and Chrome.
So why aren't people leaving the algorithmic networks? If you go to a store to buy milk, and suddenly you're told you can only access the milk after the manager makes you stand there and watch as he shoves three big ad poster boards in your face for 30 seconds each, or that there is no milk but you're welcome to purchase this set of tennis balls instead, which is what people who look like you seem to really like these days, so why aren't you buying the tennis balls?, you'd probably go to a different store. And also tell all your friends to avoid that store, because good lord, what a disaster.
So why are we letting social platforms do "every third post is an ad", "we sell your data to our 1,879 partners," and "your feed is now full of promoted content you never signed up to see" to us? Surely technical functionality isn't everything that matters here?
Image by Bruno BD on Unsplash.
This is where we need to start talking about Network Effects, and related concepts like Switching Costs and the Collective Action Problem.
In short, network effects mean that the value of a product or network is intrinsically tied to how many other people use it. It's a term borrowed from economics. Think about the first telephone: It was effectively useless. You can entirely install the one lonely telephone in existence in your living room - at that point, it's an expensive piece of home decor. Who are you going to talk to? Network effects drive value, or, as Forbes puts it 3, network effects describe:
the benefit of participation and how something can become more appealing and usable as more people become involved. In other words, value increases as usage increases.
You can see non-digital examples of this with rideshare companies - if there's not enough drivers, calling your rideshare will take longer. You get annoyed, maybe call a taxi instead next time. The more people feel that way, the fewer fares a rideshare driver is able to pick up, the gig becomes less lucrative, fewer drivers offer their services, riders have to wait longer, and round and round we go.
It works similarly for social networks. A social platform’s value depends on who else is there. Family groups, community pages, local businesses, clubs, and niche hobbyists congregate on the same network. If your people aren’t there, that platform becomes far less useful to you.
In the end, this all comes back to human psychology - the "interpersonal, tribal impulse to connect with others." But, layered on top of individual psychology, network effects then make it so that, even if you find that a network or a platform isn't serving you well anymore, you don't just pack up and leave. “I can’t switch away from [insert enshittified platform here] because all of my friends are there, and they don't want to switch.” This successfully stifles much individual momentum, and makes collective migration extremely hard.
Unfortunately for us, it is not just the network effects that keep people locked in - Switching costs also play a role.
Especially when it comes to platforms on which you are well-connected - where the network effects are highest, and "drive the most value" for you - there is a "cost" associated with leaving that network behind.
This switching cost, sometimes also referred to as a switching barrier, is not necessarily monetary (although it can be, if you are selling services or goods over the network, or access employment opportunities). This kind of "cost" is figurative, costing you something as a human being. For example, leaving the network could mean you are now being disadvantaged in one or more ways: By losing access to social contacts, events, interest groups, and simple coordination with friends and family.
The larger the network effect of a platform, the harder it is to leave it. This gets dialled up to eleven when the platform in question does not let you export your data (think posts, images, connections) and take them with you to a different platform. Which, surprise, the enshittified platforms aren't designed to do.
Depending on whether you are a user simply trying to go about your day, or someone trying to "hack" a "business model," you either find this very aggravating and petty, or you view it as "one powerful way" to keep customers "loyal".
But let's say you are one of those folks that just - takes the plunge. You cancel your facebook account, axe your twitter, the works. You sign up for the Fediverse. Maybe you even find some folks there that have interesting accounts, and you start following them.
The problem? Unless you get all of your buddies from the other networks - the networks you kicked to the curb - to switch over too, you will not be able to entirely let go of the other networks. This is where the collective action problem becomes pertinent: Even if you yourself escape the networks that no longer serve you, you still have to make your social contacts do the same thing if you don't want to be pulled back into it.
Exporting your network from these walled-garden-type platforms is basically impossible. So now you are faced with rebuilding your network elsewhere, which is an entirely different beast. This takes effort, and it requires convincing others to move too. Unless those folks are themselves interested in moving, you can't make them, as much as you'd like to. The full article seems to no longer be available, but it does indeed seem to be easier at times to move country than switch social media.
Basically, the network enshittifies, and then enshittifies some more, but it retains its "social value" - and with it, the network effects, and high switching costs. This makes users tolerate all sorts of objectively bad products: What's one more ad, what's just a liiiiittle more algorithmic meddling, what does it really matter if more horrific posts slip through due to shoddy moderation, and they've got a "premium" track now that removes ads and shows you slightly more of the content you actually want to see.... Sure, you've got to pay for that using your money and your data, but it's slightly better, it gives you some reprieve from all the ads and promoted content, and - all your friends are there....
Here's a great quote from Cory Doctorow:
Social media bosses know all this. They play a game where they try to enshittify things right up to the point where the costs they're imposing on you (with ads, boosted content, undermoderation, overmoderation, AI slop, etc) is just a little less than the switching costs you'd have to bear if you left.
If you're thinking: I know I should leave facebook/instagram/twitter, but I just can't - it's not just you. This isn’t about individual choices or weak resolve. It’s structural, and it's by design.
This all sounds very depressing. It sounds like there are all sorts of effects at work - from individual human psychology to stickiness engineered by multi-billion dollar companies whose entire raison d'etre is to keep your eyeballs on the platform for longer - that make it nigh on impossible for us to leave those enshittified networks behind.
But! Here's the good news. There are things we can do.
Image by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.
You can use network effects to your advantage. You (yes, you) can be the start of a flywheel effect in the other direction. Be the first among your friend group, your social circles, your family, who creates an account on a platform that does not lock you in.
Outside of a few minutes of time, it costs nothing to set up an account on Mastodon, Pixelfed, whichever flavour of the Fediverse you prefer. Do that! Set up an account! Play around with it. It's truly not rocket science, even though the way some legacy media write about it, it occasionally sounds like it is. You do not need to have an advanced comp sci degree or be a seasoned ham operator to be able to navigate the Fediverse. Trust me.
Follow a couple of accounts there that interest you. Punch in some hashtags you think you'll enjoy, and follow those too. Follow people who post under those hashtags. Follow people retooted/reposted by the people you follow. It will feel slower in the beginning, because there is no algorithm, and at this point, the legacy algorithmic networks have conditioned its users to view the constant barrage of content, and the constant hits of endorphins, as "normal." But do the above, and bam, you now have an active feed of only things you elected to see and nothing else.
Stick with the slowness. You'll see. At some point (very soon) you'll wonder how you ever put up with feeds that were 85% made up of content you did not actually sign up to see.
After that, if you are having a good experience, talk to people about the platform you just joined! Tell them how much better this is than the platforms that make pushing content they want you to see (not what you want to see) their entire reason of being. No ads. No tracking. No surveillance. No "promoted posts." You can see content from other federated platforms. Invite a friend or two. If it's slow to start, well, so be it. But you can be the start. You can be the beginning of a new network effect!
One of the largest roadblocks, and a massive component of the switching costs of leaving a platform, is the fact that you cannot take all your stuff (posts, images, connections) and simply port them to a different platform. That's, of course, by design. These fire exits were intentionally left out.
It does not have to be this way. If you want to migrate your mastodon account to a different server? You can. You can export your follows and followers, and your mute and block lists, as a plain CSV, and simply upload them on your new account. You can also redirect your old account to your new one, so that visitors get redirected, and you can move your followers over (!). 4
There is another aspect to interoperability, one that is also implemented in the Fediverse. And let me preface this by saying that I don't like equating Fediverse platforms with the legacy algorithmic media they most look like, but just to illustrate how cool interop is, I'm going to use some equivalencies here:
Let's say your buddy prefers the layout and functionality of Facebook. You're more the microblogging type. So you set up an account on Mastodon or Pleroma, and you buddy goes with Friendica. You can follow each other. You can see each other's content and interact with it.
None of this is technologically impossible. It's just that multi-billion dollar corporations have spent decades trying to tell us that it is.
So how do you "demand" interoperability? Keep submitting feature requests on platforms to add interoperability. They may not listen to you; that's ok. Find organizations that push for interop and standardization. Follow them, follow their work. And, of course, find interoperable platforms, create accounts there, use them, and share your experience with others!
Here's a couple additional suggestions to let simmer in your brain:
Questions? Thoughts? Feel free to get in touch!
That's a first!↩
Mastodon-style. So, like... fifteen boosts and quotes. HECK YEAH 🤘🏼↩
In a very 2022 moment, which is when this article was written, Forbes also claims that " blockchain applications like cryptocurrencies are a natural element of the new global network." I'll just let that sit there :)↩
If this sounds like magic, it's because a lot of companies have spent years telling us this isn't possible. (And sometimes it isn't, like when the origin instance is down for an extended time, but those are edge cases.)↩
2026-03-08 22:53:00
Almost all of us have been on the internet long enough to have had one of our essential community hubs go flying off into oncoming traffic. MySpace, G+, Discord (world weary sigh)? Facebook and Shitter's decent into I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream? Dead and dying, the lot of them, and they take what little community they generated down with them every bloody time. I'm tired of wasting energy on rebuilding community ties over and over again, it's not an especially good use of our time and it means that those of us who are most comfortable with, or benefit the most from, a fractured, chaotic wider community benefit and rise to the top. Behold, the world.
So I propose (years late, many bucks short) we just toss it all in the bin and go back to the beginning. Blogs, newsletters, IRC, mailing groups, and, sure why not, Usenet, go nuts. (The jury is still out on forums, but I suspect they are actually a stunted malformed sapling sprung from the same seed of evil that created modern social media.) These things are time tested, functional even in the face of overwhelming lack of interest from the general internet, and are, most importantly, utterly unbreakable. A specific blog, irc etc etc might disappear, but that won't take anything besides that one facet of a larger whole with it. When we engage in one blog, irc (etc.) we are also usually engaging in many others, or at the very least are friendly and familiar with people who are and can take us with them when they leave. Though the floor falls out behind you it is always being built in front! Unlike the enshitified internet hubs mentioned at the beginning, which offer the illusion of a wide, beautiful, more user friendly home for you on the internet that will never change except to become bigger and better and all encompassing. This is a lie.
You know those horror stories where the protagonists enter a haunted house or ghost ship or spooky cave and someone asks "why is the floor sticky? why are the walls wet? why do the windows all have teeth?". The location eats them. That's the punchline, that's social media. Old internet infrastructure may LOOK like a ghost ship or haunted house, but it is at worst exactly as it appears to be. You are not used by the platform, you use the platform.
Ok that's my justification. My solution is a scattershot effort to build some small bits of internet that I and anyone else can use to raft together with others. I am not even close to an expert on any of this, if anything I resent the state of the internet making me finally learn how servers work, so bare that in mind when I say:
If you have opinions strong enough to chat shit on social media then you have opinions strong enough to write a blog about it instead. If that's not the case then what you're probably actually doing on social media is having a little "drunk guy I'm stuck sitting next to on the bus" moment instead.
Blogspot has a cool feature where you can have a live rss feed of people you follow, displayed on the side. It's great! Blogspot is not though, it's too beautiful to live and Google WILL close that thing down one day without notice. Anyway, when you've got a safer blog (Bearblog, blot.im, or just host it yourself like a maniac), link the shit out of it. The more links to other blogs and sites the better, all to things you have even remotely once thought was cool. Make a big messy footprint so large that any inconsistencies or crappiness in it are outweighed by its sheer comprehensiveness. I made a webring (which you should join with your blog you're going to make today) for exactly this purpose.
IRC is basically the exact same thing only it won't one day snap its jaws shut and eat you whole. It's fairly straight forward. I'd argue that it makes more sense than Discord does as a system (try to show a stranger how Discord works to remind yourself how weird it is). This guide here tells you what you need to know.. If you wanna join our chat server all you need to do is replace their use of irc.libera.chat with irc.melsonia.com. Easy.
BUT WE WANT PERMANENCE LIKE DISCORD! I don't think we do. I thought I did, but it turned out that permanence is better when used deliberately (see Blog).
So we all now have a multifaceted online presence and no way to communicate directly to our audience of people hungry to get our books or zines or whatever. That's fine! Modern social media ALSO doesn't do that, it just makes you think it does. That ship sailed maybe 5+ years ago now. Instead get yourself a newsletter, there are endless choices for those, many of them free below 100 or 200 members. Then make it easy for people who like your things to sign up to that newsletter via a form or a button somewhere (see: Blog). THEN you email them whenever you like, either just to chat or to share something new you did. Really, just do whatever, treat it how you wanna treat it. All the guides on how to newsletter online are made by marketing bros, so you can just ignore them and talk to your audience how you like. If they don't want to listen, they'll leave! The people left will be the ones that like what you've got going on. I've run my newsletter with ever increasing disregard for marketing best practices, and it's only gotten better.
Every newsletter, all GOOD blog platforms (Blogspot sucks for this), and IRC if you're hosting it, can also be taken with you if you move. If you have your own domain name it can be like nothing even changed. Bearblog goes bust? Upload it all to Blot. Mailchimp wants more money? Take your friends to MailLite. No locks, no doors, no internet ghosts, no having to start again when your community gets turned into digital soylent green.
Start again, one more time, and never do it again.
2026-03-08 01:38:48
Having daddy issues, mommy issues, and family issues in general is a huge nerf to anyone’s development. I’ve experienced it firsthand, and I’ve also seen it and talked about it with others—especially with those who don’t share the same trauma as me.
For a long time I carried the role of the victim (not anymore, thanks to therapy), and although I had my reasons for walking around with the banner of the traumatized kid, the best thing I could have done was take responsibility for my life and my future.
Once I did that, everything improved. And one of the benefits of healing what had to do with my childhood and adolescence was beginning to see my parents as simply people, not as those glorified figures of authority and responsibility that most of us see when we’re young.
Toward the end of my adolescence and the beginning of my 20s, I was consumed by anger for having been an abandoned child, especially when I started facing the first challenges of adulthood and their support was scarce or nonexistent. Feelings of frustration dominated me whenever I remembered how much my parents had failed me throughout my short life. It was a mindset that gave me license to disrespect them, to do or not do whatever I wanted.
I judged them a lot for several years, analyzing in my free time and in therapy why they had treated me the way they did.
The funny thing is that they didn’t care, nor did it affect them nearly as much as it affected me. In the end, I was the one carrying the weight of their mistakes and the sadness. Their lives kept moving forward, while mine paused every time I reopened the wounds.
Ironically, once I started seeing them as human beings with flaws and virtues, not only did the anger and sadness diminish, but I also began using their mistakes as life lessons. Like a manual that, instead of focusing on the steps toward success, warns you about the traps you shouldn’t fall into.
These questions are just an example of the countless things I’ve asked myself about my life experience with them.
And at some point I had to accept something very painful for someone with these kinds of traumas. I had to accept that I was acting like them; like everything that had hurt me so much and that I had judged while growing up. I hurt others the same way I had been hurt.
But thanks to their bad example, I’ve been able to stop myself in time. On several occasions I’ve noticed how their life experience and my wounds have actually benefited me, especially in my relationships, my professional life and how I treat others in general. They’ve even served as fuel to reach several life goals I never imagined I would achieve at my age.
Would my life have been better if my parents had been responsible? Of course. I know nothing is perfect, but when I compare my life with that of friends whose parents were there to support them at key moments of their development, I can see the differences, especially in areas like self-esteem, confidence, and their mental health in general.
In the end, it’s about getting something good out of the bad, and I understand that not every case is like mine. It’s just something I’ve been thinking about recently, because other people’s mistakes have been very useful to me lately.
If my mom or dad read this, they’d probably say something stupid like, “See, son? Everything we did was good for something, even the bad", trying to downplay their actions, haha.
It’s funny, because one of the reasons that led me to the conclusions I reach in this post was realizing they were never going to hold themselves accountable for their actions. And every mistake they’ve ever admitted to, they’ve done so halfway.
So many wounds in this world could heal if people simply learned how to apologize.
2026-03-08 01:38:00
As I was tinkering away on my blog earlier I wondered if my blog will ever be finished, if I will ever feel like it's done... but I quickly came to the conclusion that no, it won't and it doesn't have to be.
A blog is a garden, forever a work in progress.
There's always something to do, some plants to tend to, some weeds to pluck, some seeds to plant, some flowers to admire. A garden is never finished, that's something I learned from my grandparents. They were outside working in their garden almost every day. When I was there it always felt complete to me, like there's not much else you can do, but my grandparents always saw room for new ideas and so the garden kept growing and evolving beyond what I could have imagined. And even if they did not add anything new for a while, there was always maintenance to do. The pond had to be cleaned, the fish had to be taken care of, the plants had to be watered, the lawn had to be mowed. It was a lifelong project that was never completed. And the same goes for a blog, or any other personal project. There is no finish line to rush towards, there are just countless little steps to take and countless new paths to explore. And all we have to do is to choose one at a time, maybe turn around after a while to try another one, to stop and look around for a moment and most importantly:
to enjoy the process 🌱