"I think this larp is for broken hearts"

[simonbrind]

A quote from Halfdan there as the subject for this post.  I am typing this entry into an instance of Word, after the Dreamwidth webpage ate a draft of my post yesterday morning; the first sacrifice to Shub-Internet for many months. How the “Beast of a Thousand Processes, Eater of Characters, Avatar of Line Noise, and Imp of Call Waiting; the hideous multi-tendrilled entity formed of all the manifold connections of the net” must hunger now everything has moved to the cloud? Perhaps it thinks we have all perished in the fire.  Not yet, not yet.

 

DW’s flaws derive from a 1990s clunkiness; if you want to post a picture you need to upload it somewhere. I still have a /lj directory on webservers filled with 320x240 gifs uploaded from a Trello / the text does not exist until you post it / there is no phone client.

 

And yet I enjoy this simplicity. There is no algorithm reading these words in order to work out what to sell me.  There is no Dreamwidth AI, the ravenous replacement for Shub-Internet, chowing down on my text searching for sentience (there is none to be found until after the second cup of coffee kicks in.)

 

This past could be the future.  It won’t be, not without critical mass, but I am comfortable here. I can italicise text, choose who reads my words, and no one profits.

 

Comments

[binidj]

Also notable is the absence of the ability to "like" a post without going to the effort of typing something. I wonder if that feels more like typing into the void, or less?

[simonbrind]

I hope it ups the signal:noise ratio at least