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this is an old-style willow sentiment that i don’t totally feel nowadays but: i don’t like recency all that much, i like slow pace of lingering interactions, necroposts are cool and one of the things i found disappointing is that all these repos had vast accumulations of posts and no one interacted
with them unless they were a few hours old. not to say i have a good way of surfacing those things, and interacting with old things requires a different engagement style, but the recency and demand for constant new attention was a little strange and uncomfortable to me.
when i found an account i hadn’t seen before and was interested in, i liked going back through their things.
part of the reason i’m appreciating the separation of my online presence right now is that i have to intentionally seek out interaction, and it’s more periodic, rather than passive and constant. it’s more like replying to an email instead of replying to a text message
sure, you do miss out on Discourse at its peak and the hot new shit, but arguably that’s largely a benefit. there are real benefits to coordinated thought and discussion on topics and it’s cool to be social like that, but it does sometimes feel like it can swallow one’s independent pursuits.
all the incentives are for recency and engagement and increasing the velocity of it all, and it takes a lot of effort to use things contrary to their intended function