The social internet is like the custard guns in Bugsy Malone

I’m wondering about pulling my personal blog from Substack and landing it somewhere else.

I don’t like - for a personal journal - that readers are bombarded with invitations to join, to subscribe, to follow, and to become yet another cog in the machine.

I don’t like the continuous temptation to “play the game” - and don’t like that most interactions are fleeting. I can’t help feeling it would be far better to have a few readers that come back, than an army of readers that happened to have the posts thrust at them while blindly scrolling.

I guess the heart of the problem - for me at least - is that I don’t see the “social internet” as social at all any more - it’s more like being on a conveyer belt, passing countless other people on their own conveyor belts.

I have a few close friends I’ve made over the years - none of them through any of the tent-pole blogging platforms, I might add - that read my blog from time to time - and kind of feel that’s how it should be.

If you want to read, and you know where to find me, you can drop by. You shouldn’t have to put up with the machinery of the internet watching your every move in order to fire words at you like a custard gun from Bugsy Malone.