busybee fluffy rambles

Just the current haps, yo.

I figure it’s been a little while since my last random-updates update thing, so here’s what’s going on in my life. Because I guess some folks like knowing this stuff? Weird. Anyway.

Has it really only been three days since my last random updates post? It feels like longer.

Well, here’s some more random unstructured updates.

Just a random undirected ramble.

I got stuff done today! For example:

• Uploaded a new release of the VRChat critter avatar (which is still on sale for $10) which fixes a long-standing bug in an Easter egg that people keep on complaining about about 5 seconds after they learn about the Easter egg
• Finally replaced the AI cover art on my Novembeat 2022 album, on both Bandcamp and itch.io (sadly it’s a huge pain to replace it on Spotify/iTunes/etc. and totally not worth it)
• Uploaded a full album video of Novembeat 2022, mostly to make it easier to share on VRChat (I will probably do the same for other albums as well)
• Wrote a couple of long-winded posts on Cohost, namely:
  • Answering a question about my computing setup
  • Answering a question about VR stuff
• Also finally set up automatic crossposting from Cohost to Mastodon

Oh yeah also I’m getting fairly active on Cohost and my asks are open. It’s fun. Way nicer than Tumblr, anyway.

I haven’t posted any bloggy things in a while, and I know folks start to worry if I haven’t posted in a while. So,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Here’s the stuff going on with me I guess.

Warning: ornery and cantankerous.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the differences between self-hosted vs. silo spaces. One thing that really stood out to me is that in self-hosted spaces, the tendency is to allow complete control over which comments are visible, and silos almost never allow that, or if they do it’s at best an in-retrospect thing.

For example, most self-hosted blogging systems give you the ability to moderate all comments (as I do), or give easy access to deleting comments which got posted, or any number of mechanisms for curating the community.

But most silo systems don’t give you that access; you might be able to block recurring trolls, or flag a comment for third-party review (usually to no effect), but all posts are set to allow anyone (with access to the post) the ability to post anything at any time, and by default everything gets floated to everyone else.

This came especially to mind today because of this unfortunate video:

I’ve seen so many creators get burned out on what they like doing, because even if 99% of the comments are positive, that 1% really gets under their skin, and they stop creating.

I’ve seen so many creators get burned out on their communities, because even if 99% of it is positive, that 1% really gets under their skin, and they stop interacting with the community, turning it into a toxic cesspool.

I’ve seen so many creators decide to capitulate to the communities and set up a personal SubReddit that they designate other people to moderate, just to keep it contained somewhere else.

I know so many creators who are on the verge of burnout and getting really tired of the dark side of having an audience.

I’m not sure if giving people the ability to require commentary to be opt-in rather than opt-out would solve these problems, but I do know anecdotally that the random snipe-type responses I get from Twitter or Mastodon are way more annoying to me than the comments I opt not to post when submitted to my site. They’re out there and visible and I have to take extra steps to get rid of them, and it’s taken out of my hands as to whether I even can get rid of them.

I don’t think I like how webmention works.

For the past few days I’ve been having a major fibro flare so I was expecting this weekend to be a total waste. But somehow I ended up getting the wherewithal to do a bunch of things today.