It is Creator Appreciation Week for Blaugust. A year ago, this post would have been easy. I’d make a list of all my favourite people on Twitter. Now, Twitter is X. The place is a shell of its old self, and I am no longer using it.
Some remain at the former bird site. Many are scattering for a new home. Some land on Blue Sky, which is locked behind invites. Others, like me, have moved to Mastodon, a place with its own onboarding issues. Threads isn’t going to move the needle until it is in the EU. TikTok is a mess – the shotgun-at-the-wall approach to social sharing.
The forced fragmenting of the social internet by companies looking for more money makes it difficult to follow and keep up with people with whom I used to invest a lot of time.
Energy Well Spent
Creating and finding an audience has never been easy. The fragmenting shows me how fragile this all is. It can all come crashing down by one person carrying a kitchen sink.
I also see that it is up to us, as content consumers, to put energy into discovering new creators. Like anything, you only get out of it what you put in. There are specific individuals I will always search out on new platforms – a few include S (Internet of Words), Belghast, BobDuckNWeave, BunnyTokyo, and Logan (LHP64D). Still, the fracturing of the online world has also allowed me to find many new people creating amazing things.
I did not want to make this week all about Mastodon, but it is my new home, and there are many people I have discovered I would never have found in algorithm-driven social sites. I am excited to share these folks with you in the coming days.
So, Welcome to Creator Appreciation Week. Even if you are not blogging for Blaugust, make a point to shout out the people and accounts who you enjoy. We all are better off when we share the things that bring us joy.