Social media left me. I at one time had a decent following on Twitter, just under a thousand people. I could post something I was pondering about and get a whole handful of peoples opinions.

I once pondered why Apple wouldn't distribute their iPhone updates peer-to-peer and got multiple network engineers far more knowledgeable than me discussing why that would be a bad idea.

It was fun and genuinely social. My following on what is now X has halved in number after the Musk acquisition, but cut far deeper in reality. When I do find myself compelled to post on X, I have two former colleagues that heart and occasionally reply. This is the extent of the interactions I have on the platform.

I created an account on Bluesky account but in my several years of largely shadowing my X posts on Bluesky I've amassed all of twenty followers.

Talking to a friend about it, I was basically told I was doing social media wrong. No one cares about "dude wonders about tech" posts anymore. Fine I guess. I never really sought a following, it just kind of happened.

X in particular I find only really boosts big creators, whatever Twitters discovery algorithm was where I would find interesting posts by people with a couple followers is long gone.

Instagram and Facebook, once places I'd reserved for friends are now just ghost towns trying to fake life with AI slop.

I miss social media, I miss having genuinely deep discussions with people I did not know over shared interests. None of the current providers seem interested in providing an outlet for this.

I feel I suspect a similar grief over not being perceived as the author, but it wasn't really of my choosing.