I’m not on Tumblr much anymore. Both for Tumblr/social media-y reasons, and for personal ones, but all of them in some way intersect with the concepts of how I spend my time, and how to be more deliberate in doing so.

I’ve been really into the idea of the Indie Web lately, which is a “movement” but also, more broadly, seems to be a lot of people asking the same sort of questions I’ve had for a long time: What is it like to be an average person who wants to express themselves on the internet in This Modern Age? How can people utilize the social, artistic, and documentary strengths of this sort of technology while avoiding everything else that is gross, shallow, and commodifying about the modern web?

Turns out, a lot of folks are just bloggin' it up old school style. I’ve been spending a lot of time on various personal webpages, those with frequently-updated blogs, or slow-growing digital gardens, and more. I’ve had my own versions of these kinds of sites for quite a while, usually built by hand, but always as an effectively private, inconsistent side-project, never knowing how or if to try and connect/project/broadcast in a broader way.

I am feeling so moved now. I used to think of these kind of personal sites (of mine, at least) as time capsules to be stumbled upon, like discovering someone’s old journals at an estate sale. And while I still think that can be true (and is incredibly interesting and worthy as an outcome), I am starting to see new (well actually, old) modes of expression, communication, and community-building slowly snaking vines and roots throughout the current mainstream web.

Having a blog that literally no one is currently looking at is freeing, and also at times soul-crushingly pointless. But who will care what I have to say, right? Reading so many other personal, unfiltered, raw blogs and pages has reminded me that the beauty is in the mundane. The beauty is in the telling and and the seeing. Not necessarily, or exclusively, in what is being told or what is being seen.

Lately I’ve been haphazardly posting on my web blog, but that site wasn’t connected to any sort of “discovery” system or larger platform. For a while, that was what I liked about it. But that’s changing. I’m still way too self-conscious about all of this to just send someone a URL and ask them to check it out. But I realize I am interested in other people seeing what I post, and engaging with it. There are a few different communities and platforms around now where folks can easily and un-algorithmically bop around and discover other blogs and follow them. But those are still Platforms. And Communities. And the whole reason I’ve been rolling my own homepage and blog is to avoid throwing in with any singular place that can change the rules of the game at any time. 1

And while I don’t blog on Tumblr, I do have some followers (somehow) and, as I get braver and more public-facing about posting, I’d want them to see what I’m putting out. Even if it is just about showtune-induced ennui…

I’d like to experiment with the concept of syndication. Not like an RSS feed (though obviously those exist and I utilize them) but the concept of POSSE: Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere.

Because how do you choose just one “home”? More to the point why should you choose just one?

POSSE type syndication seems to be the answer to all of this. I can post on a blog that I control, but syndicate wherever else I might be interested in. Maybe those syndicated channels have a life of their own, connected to their specific platforms and communities. Maybe those channels serve more as a path back to my self-hosted stuff. Either way, it’s an interesting concept that I am excited to play around with.

The thing is, syndication like I envision it would either require manually reposting, or building some Weird Dread Apparatus, frankenstein-ing all these disparate parts together. And while part of me is hunched over my keyboard, rubbing hands together with nerdy glee and quietly cackling to myself, Yes, yessssss… at the prospect of building such a thing, that’s also a large undertaking while I’m still very much in the exploratory phase. Plus, I have a habit of going all in on building something online, then lose the momentum when it comes to actually using it.

So I’ve decided to split the difference, and move my current, somewhat-rickety blog over to Micro.blog), and use that to crosspost to Tumblr - while I also vet and explore other communities and platforms to syndicate to. I’m really impressed with Micro.blog so far. Because the whole things runs on Hugo, a nerd like me has plenty of fine-tuned control and opportunities for customization - so I can still scratch that “building and tweaking things” itch - but the nuts and bolts of deployment and hosting are taken care of. In just a couple of days exploring and fiddling with Micro, it has resolved every major and minor inconvenience I experienced with my old stack. And I’ve still got a lot of tinkering to do, but that is my favorite part.

So depending on where you are reading this, you may see a footer at the end of the post informing you that this has been syndicated from my homebase web blog of Scrap of Poetry and Madness. Engage with all of this however you like. Ignore it at your will.

Most importantly, consider how you are expressing yourself online. Do you wish there were better ways than just social media? There are, my friend, there are.

1. Not that the personal homepage/blogging platforms I'm thinking of here seem to be in danger of doing that. But still. When someone else ultimately holds the keys to the platform, they hold the keys to your content, and in some ways to your voice.↩