Tag: internet

Medium doesn’t suck, actually?

Yesterday, I made a Medium account and started importing stories from here onto it. I was listening to the Writer's Well, one of my favourite writing podcasts, and J Thorn from the show was talking about his recent blogging project, where he writes articles on living the author life and distributes them to various platforms - a podcast, YouTube, Medium, Soundcloud etc. He noted that Medium had been the most successful, and that thanks to Publications, which are essentially curated collections of articles that boost visibility, he'd done pretty well there. I was hesitant before, but with his recommendation, I went home straight away and made my account.

The joy of slow communication

Communication is too fast nowadays. At the click of a button I can send people memes, message an ex, troll for sex on a hookup app, and so on. It's taken for granted that we can instantly message and reply to people, which means many people get annoyed when you don't immediately answer their texts or phone calls. Technology was supposed to make our life simpler, but it just made it more urgent.

Facebook has beaten me into submission

When I left university I deleted Facebook. I made a new one, to keep up with the 20 friends I actually wanted to stay in touch with, but I essentially severed ties with most of my uni acquaintances and the vast majority of people from school. Given how Facebook had inadvertantly forced me out of the closet many times, it was liberating to be anonymous, and even today I'm surprised how far-reaching the effects were.

How to not be weird about finding someone’s online presence

So, you're a parent, friend, teacher, whatever to a Certain Person, and one day while Googling online, or through the arcane workings of Whatsapp, you find the Internet Page of said Person. It could be a philosophical blog, a gawky vlog, a lewd Twitter... The important thing is, it's something personal that you had no idea about. You get a little thrill of finding something out you "weren't supposed to", and maybe even a pang of hurt, because you feel like you know this Person so well that they should've told you about it.