Entries tagged with social media

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Not Now

Been pondering adding a "Now" page to my personal website, to note my main focuses in a given period. Here's a link to the website describing the concept. But having thought more I'm thinking I won't. As a female I often have disturbing interactions with folk (usually male!) online, and I'm wary of how much info I put out there. I could easily do to trim it back. But adding a "Now" page feels like a step too far. Had fun browsing the sample "Now" pages linked from the site though, looking at those of Scottish folk. Who are almost entirely male ...

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Woof

Reminder about today’s best hashtag on social media #dogsatpollingstations - there are also some other animals showing up, including cats.

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Watching Neil Gaiman chat about fantasy

Martin and I have just enjoyed watching last night’s recording (for paid ticket holders only - I had bought an online viewing ticket) of Neil Gaiman at the British Library chatting with Roz Kaveney about fantasy. It was lovely. Takeaways included:

Neil has a half completed Neverwhere sequel novel that he hopes to get back to after writing Good Omens season 3 (yes 3!).
As a youngster Neil thought he’d be a scifi writer later in life. Ditto for Terry Pratchett. Both of whom ended up pretty resolutely as fantasy writers.
The only Discworld book Neil had a serious hand in was Pyramids, which he helped plan the plot for.
So many insights into the origins of Sandman - even loads I hadn’t heard in Neil’s one hour detailed chat at the Edinburgh Book Festival just about Sandman.
Neil thinks we are approaching the end of social media as we knew it. In particular he spoke of Twitter as “It’s a thing that we used to have in the olden days that was good.” Quite!
I still have some Neil Gaiman graphic novels yet to read - must prioritise! His discussion of his family history links with Violent Cases and Mr Punch was eye opening.
And yes, we need to watch the last part bonus episode for Sandman season 1 (“Calliope”) which was mentioned in the chat, and also Good Omens season 2 (also mentioned).

Tomorrow night we will be watching the recording from tonight of Neil Gaiman chatting with Rob Wilkins about Terry Pratchett and his worlds. Should be fab. Again I had pre bought an online ticket. These events are part of the wider Fantasy exhibition season at the British Library, and are going ahead despite the library’s ongoing cyber attack problems. I’m finding it astonishing that I’m able to watch and enjoy these talks viewing from northern Scotland.

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Mastodon figures

Wow those follower numbers are round figures. Me on Mastodon.

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Twitter/X to Bluesky

Fellow migrants to Bluesky from Twitter/X who still have accounts there may want to check out the Sky Follower Bridge add on for Firefox or Chrome. This lets you find more people you follow on the Bird site who are on Bluesky. Slow to use - especially with 2000 following accounts to cross check for me! - but it works. It's found many familiar folks I was missing on Bluesky, raising the number of accounts I'm now following from about 200 to 469. Many of whom are now following me back too (familiar names). Bluesky is still a restricted closed network, but I will be sharing invite codes when I get them. P.S. After using this plugin it's best to change your Bluesky password, for security/safety reasons. But Sky Follower Bridge is an incredibly handy tool.

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Some quick preliminary thoughts on different social networks

I'm just pondering some ideas that I may expand into a full blog post on my academic blog for my musings. I wrote a similar blog post some years ago and it may be a good time for an update.

I'm off Twitter now. My account still exists, and hasn't been closed - I'm reluctant to wipe it or remove the tweets, for historical preservation (haha right, yup in Musk land!) reasons. But I never login, and my latest post says I'm basically off it now.

Facebook is for family and friends. Largely to keep in touch with Martin's close family and also lots of my friends. I also help fellow vasculitis patients from time to time in our Vasculitis UK support group there.

Dreamwidth is for a mix of more fan based posts (e.g. what I'm reading, watching etc, thoughts about Babylon 5) and a place I can vent some more private restricted stuff (including that I can't post wider e.g. on Facebook). Rather a curious mix! But it is working for me. I was on LiveJournal for many years before then.

Mastodon feels like a rather shaggy dog of a social network. I mean that as a compliment. It's rather anarchic and chaotic, but friendly, and I like to post lots of informal things there. It's also a bit of a vent for me. I'm less likely to post serious history stuff there than genealogy things and - and above all probably! - accordion stuff.

I'm newly on Bluesky. I was surprised to find so many familiar faces and friends there. I'm thinking it's probably going to be more somewhere where I engage with fellow academic historians - there are a *lot* of them on there. But my thoughts on that are still evolving. And it will need to open more widely to truly work.

I did try Threads but didn't get on with it - though my account still exists. It doesn't offer as much to me as Instagram and seems more like seeing people interact with famous people rather than wider engagement.

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Bluesky

I’m newly on Bluesky. Still to settle in but have already started finding familiar faces and picking up followers. https://bsky.app/profile/vivdunstan.bsky.social

Bluesy is invitation only at the moment, but I should get invite codes myself in due course. I was lucky last night to get one from a fellow genealogist / one place studier. Who I caught offering one at the right moment!

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Twitter bye bye

Logging out of all my Twitter/X accounts, though leaving the accounts intact (though they may be deleted by the site in due course). The final straw for me was (1) Twitter only suspending some blatantly pro Nazi accounts after advertisers bailed; and (2) the essential "block" function is soon to be removed for users. I'm gone. I can be found here, on Facebook, Mastodon, my website and various blogs. But out of there. It will take me some time to remove Twitter references from my various places.

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Mastowho

Wrote a fresh #introduction post on my Mastodon. Then realised I forgot to mention Doctor Who and me being a big fan, and managed to write a whole other post about that 😜 I am approaching 900 followers on there, which is pretty good, given I’m not a public figure. I really like the engagement I get. But using hashtags liberally is essential. I am almost totally off Twitter, or whatever it might be called by tomorrow.

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Mastodon progress

Reached 300 followers on #Mastodon where my handle is

vivdunstan@mastodon.scot Finding it welcoming, after the initial hurdle of which server to choose! (it doesn’t matter) Use hashtags liberally. I recommend pinning an #Introduction post on your profile via the web interface.

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Twitter data

Taking a closer look at the personalization.js file I downloaded with the archive of my Twitter stuff pre Musk. A lot of the information is inferred. They think my languages are English (yes), German (haha no!) and Spanish (nope!). Worst of all they think I’m “male”. Some really wacky interests in there (“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” - ok, yes, a horror film fan, but I aint watching that!). Will peruse more. I was keen to take a copy of my data before everything went bonkers. My expectations are not proving over the top.

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Mastodon (2)

A good first start with Mastodon. Debirdify helped me quickly find some of the people I follow on Twitter, though just a fraction of the 2000+. But it’s already a welcoming place. I don’t intend to leave Twitter - I don’t believe in letting bullies win. But I’m keeping my options open. Note it doesn’t seem to matter much which Mastodon server you pick at setup, though it can limit searches. I’m a general poster and chose the general Scottish server but if you tend to be more specific eg re coding or game development etc you may want to pick a more specific server initially.

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Mastodon

I’ve just set up a Mastodon account, mainly to nab the username, though I may use it more in future. Here is my handle:

vivdunstan@mastodon.scot