{"id":29673,"date":"2021-10-11T09:17:23","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T16:17:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=29673"},"modified":"2021-10-11T09:17:27","modified_gmt":"2021-10-11T16:17:27","slug":"giving-it-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=29673","title":{"rendered":"Giving It Away"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe you think I quote Mimi Smartypants, my favorite blogger, too often. But, but … she says it so well<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

Hello comrades. Let\u2019s sneak one in under the wire so my archives page continues to look nice, with at least one entry a month. Good thing I didn\u2019t follow the crowd and try to start a paid Substack thingy, huh? Because you sure would not be getting your money\u2019s worth! I will just stay on the internet and give it away (give it away, give it away now).<\/p>\n

I do wonder sometimes what the next thing will be. Blogs are mostly gone, no one can reasonably pay a whole bunch of fifty dollars-es per month for a wide variety of personal newsletters,* and the Instagram-influencer thing is increasingly considered a joke even by people who consume that kind of content. Something else must be just around the corner. WHAT WILL IT BE? I demand to know so I can make fun of it and then decline to participate, like the crabby Gen-Xer I am.<\/p>\n

*I realize that lots are free, but there\u2019s still like\u2026a mental load? To getting an email, even a fun one, that you \u201chave\u201d to open and read? As opposed to just browsing around, wasting time on the internet, going to your favorite sites? I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

Yes, that. What she says. I like blogging. Expressing myself in words is its own reward, and for my purposes, writing a blog \u2014 giving it away on the internet \u2014 is the perfect solution. Paul’s Thing isn’t going anywhere.<\/p>\n

I don’t know how many people read my blog. Maybe a couple of hundred. But would there be more than a dozen if I didn’t use social media to alert the world when I put up new posts? Up to now, that’s been my rationale for staying on Facebook. Say what you will about how stupid and awful Facebook has become, it’s usefulness as a giant bulletin board anyone can thumbtack notices to is hard to beat.<\/p>\n

It’s no secret I want to split the blanket with Mark Zuckerberg’s data-mining empire. Now, after humiliating myself by falling for a crude Facebook phishing scam and spamming my entire roster of friends, more than ever. But wait, I keep telling myself, if I quit Facebook, how will anyone know when I’ve posted something new? Will my readership dry up and blow away?<\/p>\n

Maybe not. I checked my friends list on Facebook just now: after the spamming incident, I’m down to 206. Over on Twitter, though, I have 391 followers on my main account<\/a><\/strong>, plus another 244 on my Eagle Bot account<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

So what happens if I throttle back on Facebook and concentrate on Twitter? I’ll just note in passing that Mimi Smartypants posts updates to Twitter but not to Facebook. And she’s doing all right.<\/p>\n

We’ll see.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s no secret I want to split the blanket with Mark Zuckerberg’s data-mining empire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29673"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29679,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29673\/revisions\/29679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}