The Community Conundrum
I've been having a lot of fun with bearblog.dev over the past week or so.
One of the things I like most about it, is the lack of social pressure to grow or please. I even removed the toast (like) count because I don't want to be tempted to constantly check it.
At the moment I don't have comments turned on. And I don't have a guest book. Mostly because without them I don't have to worry about why they're empty.
Without a follow mechanism I can't be tempted to compare my audience to someone else's.
There's a refreshing freedom in it all, something you can't find on traditional social media.
But there's a cost to remaining small. A sacrifice must be made when you fail to give an audience a voice.
You sacrifice community.
I have no idea if there are any of you interested in what I'm doing. And I have no easy way to keep track of those of you I find that I am interested in.
Yes... RSS. But that's not a frictionless process, especially with my brain. I've yet to settle on how I'm going to organize my RSS world. So at the moment it's still a problem.
But even then there are many of you that are similarly set up. Without comments or guest books. I don't blame you. In case you're just joining us, that's how I roll.
So all we're left with is toasts/likes and the trending tab. To let people know we enjoyed their post, or to find out how alone we might be because we've hidden our own toast/like count.
And in an odd way... that feels very much like traditional social media.
Don't get me wrong, I don't want to make things overly technical. I recently designed an old school pixel badge for this blog because I dig the indie vibe.
But it would be nice to somehow shine a light on the communities here. Even a simple categorical way to discover blogs would be handy.
It would certainly be better for my mental health than adding comments or a guestbook. π