I’ve been thinking recently about my digital footprint. Not with concern about how much data I leave visible, but with concern about how much I contribute to the digital spaces I reside in. I’ve been thinking about the places I like to consume or create content, and more interestingly, how I want to change my relationship to content.

How I currently contribute to the internet

The title of this post is a bit misleading. Hopefully, it’s catchy, but it’s at least a bit dishonest. The truth is that I know if I am a creator or a consumer. At least right now. I also know it’s not entirely what I want to be.

Right now, I’m a consumer. Almost entirely. This blog is one small effort to try to change that. Given the infrequency of my posting, I’m pretty sure I’m not currently very successful. I lurk on the various forms of social media, but don’t really post much. On most networks, I can count on one hand how many times I might post, if ever, in a year.

The places that I dislike

The first place that I dislike is Twitter. I’m obviously not unique recently, but Twitter is a shadow of its former self. It’s impossible to separate the network from the person who now owns it and I have very little more respect for most of the content I see than I have for Elon himself. A recurring theme in the places that I don’t like will be the algorithms in place picking and choosing what content I see from those I follow and when. Twitter is a prime example of this. Posts on the default view will be shown to me in any order, from people I more often than not don’t follow and only rarely agree with. Even more than any single change Twitter has made that amplified this, it was the mass exodus of people I respect and the cultivation of beliefs. The end result has created a place that I only check in with and scroll through for very short bursts and only to read the posts of specific people. Almost anything else ends with me leaving in disgust.

A lot of what can be said about Twitter can also be said about Facebook. Instead of cultivating for a set of beliefs though, in my experience Facebook cultivates for a demographic. That, in turn, has a bit of the same effect, although less egregious. Facebook is something of a disinterested and not fully informed boomer magnet. Simply put, the content isn’t there for me.

Finally, Instagram. Instagram was a bit hard to place, because Instagram might inspire more neutral feelings to me than truly negative ones. I think the most positive aspect of it is that it’s something I can share with my girlfriend. She will send me reels throughout the week since it’s the network she most often spends empty time on. She scrolls through reels and sends them to me until there’s a good amount and every few days or so we’ll sit together and watch through them. I think I most strongly associate the quality time with her, with Instagram. Beyond that, I really don’t interact with it very much. I try to post a picture there every once in a while, but the reality is that it doesn’t happen much.

The places that I do like

So far, I like Mastodon. I switched about a year ago from Twitter and it definitely feels the most like old Twitter did to me. I see the posts I want to see from only the people I asked to see them from in the order they were posted. That sounds simple, but the reality is that it makes all the difference. I can follow voices that I both agree and disagree with that challenge me, make me laugh, and provide me with content that I truly value. Unlike Twitter, I can do it all without scrolling past holocaust deniers complaining about how the mainstream media won’t platform them like Twitter does.

Finally, this blog. I have truly enjoyed the time I’ve spent writing the first couple of posts since I started fresh with this site a few months ago. I really would like to prioritize and find time to write here more. I think I struggle with content that seems worthy of ‘long-form’ analysis, but I’ll continue trying to get better at that. The bigger question is, at least early on and right now, does it matter than I don’t think anyone reads it or sees it and how might I eventually get them to? Should I even care a little? I know it’s not my primary reason, but without any visibility, it does seem like it could be a notebook or a text file, just as effectively.

Technical vs Personal content

One of the problems I don’t have a solution for revolves around the distinction between the types of content that I want to create. I like writing a bit more technically, but I also like writing a bit more personally. Should those content types live next to each other in the same blog?

For now, I don’t think I have the kind of output to separate them, but that could very well have an effect on the people who might choose to read it. In the end, it feels less cohesive and more directionless if a post about a book shows up next to a post about Kubernetes deployments. For now, I think I won’t really do anything to reconcile this, but it is something that I contemplate when I think about this topic.

Goals regarding content creation

So, finally, what will I change so that I’m able to create more of my own content?

The first commitment that I’ll attempt to make to myself is simple. I stop worrying about if something is worth posting, or who might want to read it. I simply post it. The fact is that I can’t create content if I don’t just create content.

The second is recognizing and focusing on the places I like. Long form stuff on the blog and short form stuff on Mastodon. Probably linking to the blog from Mastodon as well. Hopefully, more people find it interesting to read than are annoyed by the “spam” or “advertising” that it can often seem to be. That might be helped by adding context for why I think it’s worth reading, which means challenging myself to find that.

I think those are simple enough places to start. I don’t know how to measure success, but I’ll adjust and incrementally improve.

In the meantime, thanks for consuming and giving me a reason to change how I have interacted with the internet for so much of the last few years.