X/Twitter
I know that about 130 people a day (out of a dwindling 17.8K) still use my X.com (formerly Twitter) link to direct them to the new comic. Given the state of the platform in 2023, I no longer want to interact with it. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to interact with you. Apologies for the inconvenience.
RSS is still around, technically more popular than ever (podcasts) and very easy to use, just saying
RSS is exactly how I got to this page, thanks to free RSS aggregator inoreader.com. I’ve been subscribed to John’s RSS comic feeds since using Google Reader was still an option.
I no longer interact with X either – it (along with a previous failed presidency here in the states) illustrates why billionaires should NOT be given free reign over much of anything. And I’m also one of those folks who connects via RSS because it inserted itself as a comfortable, if old, way of keeping up with things. (hoping content providers keep it going).
This is so completely true.
About a month after Elon bought the site, everyone I knew all of a sudden started remarking on how their feeds were suddenly filled with vicious, racist posts from people they’d never followed and had no interest in interacting with.
I will keep the politics to a minimum – but it’s been fairly well established now that Elon bans whistleblowers who expose the altright, such as Nick “Crabman” Monroe, who was doing groundbreaking work in exposing the Andrew Tate sex trafficking ring, while going out of his way to replatform actual neo-Nazis like Paul Golding and Andrew Anglin.
John, we support you completely. You are an international treasure.
Elon is an international nightmare, and what he has done to Twitter/X is dangerous to the entire planet.
I get it. I have RSS set up with your site, so I’ll still be able to show up.
Don’t blame you. I use RSS, myself.
I still use Twitter a little due to sheer pigheaded stubbornness of not wanting the fascists to chase me out of my place, but — but — most of my Twitter-style activity is over on BlueSky these days.
I sympathize. I follow your work from RSS though these days I usually see them slightly in advance on Mastodon.
I was going to bring up Mastodon as well. I’m glad you’re already there, John.
I didn’t realise that the Mastodon auto-repost had started working again!
Quite right.
You know, it would be nice if artists (and their fans) could just be about the art, and leave their half-baked politics out of it….
You mean it’s too bad that they talk about things that don’t interest YOU, *specifically*? Yeah, that’s a shame, all right. That’s a DARNED shame. 😐
lol, spoken truly like someone that has completely missed the point, which is: not everyone agrees on such matters, and taking a public stance risks alienating half the audience…
This is why I prefer being an engineer to being an artist. All of the creativity, none of the mollycoddling. “Oh please, sir. Might I have an opinion?” Feh.
I think it’s a safe assumption that half of John’s audience are not on the Elon/”redpill” side of the debate. He may alienate uh…. 0.5-2% of his audience in this way, if those individuals happen to care about or be paying attention to this specific post/issue. And I don’t speak for him but I speak for myself when I say in that case, good riddance.
Lol, you think whatever helps you sleep better each night, I guess… 🙂
I don’t think I made a political statement here! It’s just an awful environment and a terrible platform to share work on regardless of your politics. I’m sick of people’s politics in a totally bipartisan way. It even infected this thread ABOUT X/Twitter.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m earnestly trying to understand – it (X/Twitter) used to be just fine, but now it has somehow become “awful” and “terrible”. Why? What changed?
The platform is broken – no two factor authentication, timeline full of comments unrelated to my interests or anyone I follow, replies to an anodyne tweet roll seamlessly onto tweets by people just fighting and screaming about things I don’t have any interest in. To me, it’s like a fever dream. It makes me feel bad using it. Does this explain it, Larry? As the original post reads, I don’t want to interact with the platform, but some of my readers still do, so I wanted to make it plain that it was no reflection in them.
It does, thank you sir. I quit all social media years ago for pretty much the same reasons, and don’t miss it a bit. But I understand that you can’t really do that, having so many fans and all…. 🙂
I stopped using Xwitter months ago (for the same reasons, really). It was a shame since I’d already left FB a couple of years ago. But I do feel being off those platforms has been very good for my mental health and my blood pressure.
I’m still on Instagram but my feed there is almost entirely cute animals.
Same here – after being banned for a very innocuous remark about Jacob Rees-Mogg falling asleep in parliament (to the effect that if he was waiting for the “kiss of true love” he’ll be snoring for a very long time) I stepped back from Twitter altogether and after the couple of weeks of cold turkey I inevitably suffered, didn’t even try to get my account back under Musk.
I don’t do instagram, but do google cute animals. You know how it is – you come for the kittens and stay for the otters.
I stopped using twitter after they shadow banned me and then cancelled my account before Elon got it and X’d it.
Just like the twitter files scandal of US government control showed.
You have to support or ignore all the wars, genocides, corporate corruption, local corruption, cuts to health care, public housing, social services and ignore excited delirium syndrome police killings to exist on twitter.
Do as thou wilt.