BoingBoing move to substack

That was YOU!!!

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Mine was originally a burner, but became useful for other sites, which is why I didnā€™t want to keep the name on such a prominent site that was frozen in amber.

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Nature is healing.

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Well, since I was raised on a sort of ā€œwho knows what it might be good forā€ mindset, I also saw the withering of the BBS as an opportunity to maybe spend a little less time online and maybe getting a little more stuff done offline (and there is a lot to be done, to be honest)ā€¦

But here I am.

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I was freaking out until I heard from you.
rabbit-3-smiley-092 scared
Then I was all
rabbit-3-smiley-105 dance 4

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ā€¦and ā€œthrew a shoeā€ is quite a nice horsey turn of phrase, altho not one which one, nor oneā€™s horse, enjoys experiencing IRL.

ā€¦and @orenwolf
applause 2

all 10s dammit from FGD

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I get the feeling that BB users who were very engaged with the BBS [1] were more likely to find the change unsettling and off-putting. But I suspect that group is a minority of the readership [2], and a whole lot of BB readers prefer the new format.

Iā€™d imagine that there are plenty of fans of the BB front page who donā€™t comment on the BBS, and this probably suits them better than the cheesy ads.

[1] That is, us.
[2] I mean, it should be a minority - I think there were only a few hundred people who engaged with the BBS at least once a month.

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I had no idea that your moderation work was unpaid.
Thanks to your (and community moderators) work Boing Boing BBS was a safe space and pretty much the only place online I knew of where talking about serious political topics wouldnā€™t be overwhelmingly stressful. I want to thank you for this, you did seriously amazing job.

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Same for me. I thought the bbs going dormant would help me spend more time offline. Iā€™ve lurked some here since the very start, but didnā€™t make an account until last year, and then I didnā€™t really participate beyond the DMs. And here I am now, spending hours reading through all the new comments :woman_shrugging:t2:

My sister, for one. She and her wife are long-time fans of Cory and of BB. Once, when I mentioned the vibrant online community that I participated in, and explained that it was actually the comment section of BB and that I always wondered if she might recognize me from a family story or two that Iā€™d told there, she said ā€œIā€™ve never even looked. I never read the comments on the posts.ā€

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Guys, the BBBBS has been on the radar of all the worst Palantir-style fuckery for twenty years now. They Have Your Number. You just have to accept it and become the Rorshach you never wanted to beā€”make the billionaires understand that they are locked in with us, not the other way around. I know itā€™s scummy, but theyā€™ve tainted the whole world with their scammy authoritarian hell. Itā€™s up to everyone to pressure-wash their lazy tags off the sidewalks.

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Yeah, i have been saying this for years. And situations differ, obviously, but for me, at least, i am far too well known locally for being trans supporting, liberal, feministic, etc etc to worry about my BB posts. I did anonymize out of an abundance of caution, but truly, if it comes to that, my local activities will have me on more lists than my online stuff.

17305543906243768628412620002795

Iā€™m the only one i have seen around here wearing thisā€¦

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One of the casualties of that time was the Boing Boing book that chronicled all this good stuff! *slaps the manuscript* will finish this one day.

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hmm. Having trouble finding the equivalent of the bb forums on substack. Where is everybody?

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Pretty much hereā€¦ lots of us are just not going to participate at SuSā€¦

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Itā€™s the chat and chat is shit.

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tcg550 left an open invite to a private Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/displacedmutants/

I havenā€™t signed up yet, so I donā€™t know who all is there.


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Trueā€¦

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and just in the last half day or so, thereā€™s no permitted commenting on the recent postings. hmmā€¦ really donā€™t get the ā€˜goalā€™ over there.

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Popping in briefly to share this piece from Cory. Reading it, and considering the timing, I donā€™t think this is entirely about Blueskyā€¦

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/

I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will

[ā€¦]

But hereā€™s the thing: all those other platforms, the ones where I unwisely allowed myself to get locked in, where today I find myself trapped by the professional, personal and political costs of leaving them, they were all started by people who swore theyā€™d never sell out. I know those people, the old blogger mafia who started the CMSes, social media services, and publishing platforms where I find myself trapped. I considered them friends (I still consider most of them friends), and I knew them well enough to believe that they really cared about their users.

They did care about their users. They just cared about other stuff, too, and, when push came to shove, they chose the worsening of their services as the lesser of two evils.

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