How To Stop Jumping Ship
Almost all of us have been on the internet long enough to have had one of our essential community hubs go flying off into oncoming traffic. MySpace, G+, Discord (world weary sigh)? Facebook and Shitter's decent into I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream? Dead and dying, the lot of them, and they take what little community they generated down with them every bloody time. I'm tired of wasting energy on rebuilding community ties over and over again, it's not an especially good use of our time and it means that those of us who are most comfortable with, or benefit the most from, a fractured, chaotic wider community benefit and rise to the top. Behold, the world.
So I propose (years late, many bucks short) we just toss it all in the bin and go back to the beginning. Blogs, newsletters, IRC, mailing groups, and, sure why not, Usenet, go nuts. (The jury is still out on forums, but I suspect they are actually a stunted malformed sapling sprung from the same seed of evil that created modern social media.) These things are time tested, functional even in the face of overwhelming lack of interest from the general internet, and are, most importantly, utterly unbreakable. A specific blog, irc etc etc might disappear, but that won't take anything besides that one facet of a larger whole with it. When we engage in one blog, irc (etc.) we are also usually engaging in many others, or at the very least are friendly and familiar with people who are and can take us with them when they leave. Though the floor falls out behind you it is always being built in front! Unlike the enshitified internet hubs mentioned at the beginning, which offer the illusion of a wide, beautiful, more user friendly home for you on the internet that will never change except to become bigger and better and all encompassing. This is a lie.
You know those horror stories where the protagonists enter a haunted house or ghost ship or spooky cave and someone asks "why is the floor sticky? why are the walls wet? why do the windows all have teeth?". The location eats them. That's the punchline, that's social media. Old internet infrastructure may LOOK like a ghost ship or haunted house, but it is at worst exactly as it appears to be. You are not used by the platform, you use the platform.
Ok that's my justification. My solution is a scattershot effort to build some small bits of internet that I and anyone else can use to raft together with others. I am not even close to an expert on any of this, if anything I resent the state of the internet making me finally learn how servers work, so bare that in mind when I say:
1] Blog. Make a blog.
If you have opinions strong enough to chat shit on social media then you have opinions strong enough to write a blog about it instead. If that's not the case then what you're probably actually doing on social media is having a little "drunk guy I'm stuck sitting next to on the bus" moment instead.
2] Glue those blogs together
Blogspot has a cool feature where you can have a live rss feed of people you follow, displayed on the side. It's great! Blogspot is not though, it's too beautiful to live and Google WILL close that thing down one day without notice. Anyway, when you've got a safer blog (Bearblog, blot.im, or just host it yourself like a maniac), link the shit out of it. The more links to other blogs and sites the better, all to things you have even remotely once thought was cool. Make a big messy footprint so large that any inconsistencies or crappiness in it are outweighed by its sheer comprehensiveness. I made a webring (which you should join with your blog you're going to make today) for exactly this purpose.
3] Screw Discord
IRC is basically the exact same thing only it won't one day snap its jaws shut and eat you whole. It's fairly straight forward. I'd argue that it makes more sense than Discord does as a system (try to show a stranger how Discord works to remind yourself how weird it is). This guide here tells you what you need to know.. If you wanna join our chat server all you need to do is replace their use of irc.libera.chat with irc.melsonia.com. Easy.
BUT WE WANT PERMANENCE LIKE DISCORD! I don't think we do. I thought I did, but it turned out that permanence is better when used deliberately (see Blog).
4] If you make stuff, make a newsletter
So we all now have a multifaceted online presence and no way to communicate directly to our audience of people hungry to get our books or zines or whatever. That's fine! Modern social media ALSO doesn't do that, it just makes you think it does. That ship sailed maybe 5+ years ago now. Instead get yourself a newsletter, there are endless choices for those, many of them free below 100 or 200 members. Then make it easy for people who like your things to sign up to that newsletter via a form or a button somewhere (see: Blog). THEN you email them whenever you like, either just to chat or to share something new you did. Really, just do whatever, treat it how you wanna treat it. All the guides on how to newsletter online are made by marketing bros, so you can just ignore them and talk to your audience how you like. If they don't want to listen, they'll leave! The people left will be the ones that like what you've got going on. I've run my newsletter with ever increasing disregard for marketing best practices, and it's only gotten better.
5] Leave only footprints, take only everything
Every newsletter, all GOOD blog platforms (Blogspot sucks for this), and IRC if you're hosting it, can also be taken with you if you move. If you have your own domain name it can be like nothing even changed. Bearblog goes bust? Upload it all to Blot. Mailchimp wants more money? Take your friends to MailLite. No locks, no doors, no internet ghosts, no having to start again when your community gets turned into digital soylent green.
Conclusion
Start again, one more time, and never do it again.