The Final Tweet in the Coffin

And giving your players a little responsibility

This Week’s post reflects on the places we choose to frequent.

Chatting with people at GenCon, we occasionally drifted onto talking about Google+, the rosy past where we rejoiced in social media paradise [citation needed].

It's getting on for six years since I wrote about its upcoming closure, and where are we now?

No, I mean where are we?

I've bounced around a few places since then.

Blog: The staple. I'll keep it going as long as I have the urge to write stuff. I post weekly and check my comments daily. I mostly stay up to date with what other people are doing through blogs. If you aren't blogging, I'm likely to be unaware of your new thing.

Newsletter: Substack may not be the perfect platform, but I'm enjoying this as a parallel version of the blog. I know others write bespoke newsletters, separate to their blog, but really I just treat this as an alternative way to get the same stuff. In essence the archive acts like a blog of sorts, but I prefer reading on a proper blog page. Something about having that tantalising blogroll right there beside the post.

Patreon: This really sits on top of the two previous places. If you're creating anything, even if you don't want to offer anything extra, I'd recommend giving this a try. You might be surprised how many people just want to offer support for what you do.

Discord: My preferred way to just talk with people. I guess I like the old IRC-vibe, but I appreciate it's not for everyone. For reasons explained further down this is now my primary place for DMs.

Broadcasts and Podcasts: I have a lot of fun doing these but they're an occasional side-line for me.

Reddit: I really enjoyed doing an AMA on there a while back, but I'm more lurker than a poster. It's a great place to browse now and then to find cool stuff, but I don't feel like I get any real personal connections from there.

Twitter: Oof. I'll try to keep this succinct. This place was designed to reward the sort of behaviour I didn't want to engage with and has steadily gotten worse. I saw how it changed the way people interacted with each other. I saw the way it stoked unwelcome fires. I kept active there mostly as a point of contact to invite people onto the podcast or to collaborate on a project. Essentially, I went there because I liked some of the people there, even if it made them act differently.

I decided the feed was too much. I unfollowed everybody and just stuck around to respond to mentions and DMs, only posting to link to my other places.

Then they changed things so that I'd be fed recommended content instead. I could block these on my browser but it was trickier on my phone.

All the while the content of those posts got worse and worse, to say nothing of the company ownership.

Right now I'm ashamed to even have a presence there. I don't want to be associated with it. It's embarrassing that I was there at all.

I've complained for a long time, but never really walked the walk.

As of now I've left my account open mainly to keep the name, but I'm not going to go there anymore and I've removed the link from my other sites.

If you're able to do the same then let's just do it. We're better off elsewhere.

Bsky: Yeah this is a nicer twitter, so I don't feel as dirty for maintaining a presence there, but it's still probably something I'm better off without. I'm likely soft-quitting this too, but might dip into my incredibly restricted feed now and then.

What if I'm wrong?

A few potential problems come to mind.

What if I need to contact somebody I don't already have contact details for?
Twitter was normally a good place to do this, but I figure I can probably get hold of anybody I need to by asking around on other platforms.

Is this terrible advice if you don't already have a well-established network and platform for your own content?
Yeah, I guess I can only talk from my own perspective, so if you're hustling to make contacts and build your audience from scratch then maybe this is all a bit isolationist. 

In short:

Quit Twitter.
Newsletter Up.
Hit the Blog. 

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Elsewhere

• Zedeck Siew describes the distinction between Monuments and Shrines.

• Fae Errant shows how different types of responsibility can enhance a character’s connection to the world.

• Plasmodics is a Mark of the Odd game featuring some truly bonkers mutant mayhem, funding now on Kickstarter.

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Coming Soon

Over on Patreon I talk about making use of Tarot cards.

If I'm not careful I can see a future where I own far too many Tarot decks.

Not so much for oracular life guidance, but I'm increasingly drawn to these decks of highly evocative artwork as a means to spark ideas.

In the throes of writing Mythic Bastionland I picked up The Complete Arthurian Tarot deck, which is a joy to flick through.

Expect the full post here and on the blog next week.

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