Technology @beehaw.org elfpie @beehaw.org 2mo ago

The burning of the Library of Alexandria for fandoms

taylorlorenz.substack.com The burning of the Library of Alexandria for fandoms

Brazil blocking X could deal a fatal blow to stan twitter

I've never been on twitter, but I'm not that surprised so many of us here were driving engagement.

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People haven't adjusted yet to the reality that online social ecosystems matter, they affect so much in the real world. Decimating multiple online spaces in such a short time has consequences and i hate that a handful of random guys with no stake in any of it except money get to make decisions like that.
- Such is the fate of hypercentralized spaces. The fediverse fixes this.
  
  Hopefully the next places will be more durable. It is still SAD and damaging when vibrant communities get destroyed though. I am more lamenting that.
Surely this could be good, right?

If celebrities need to be accessible to their biggest fans, maybe it would induce them to leave the birdsite? And if this is as big a migration as the article suggests, it has the potential to snowball in network effects, giving other influential users one less reason to feel chained to a dumpster fire.
- I thought the same. Now plataforms have a target audience to focus. The accounts move, the artists have to follow, the rest has a reason to move as well.
The Great Shopping Mall of Alexandria
- The Hanging Dumpsters of Babble-on
Honest quetion, what's a stan account?
- A stan is a highly devoted fan of a particular person, like a musician, actor, author or influencer. The term comes from a song by Eminem, and stans often interact on Twitter [...]
  
  From How To Geek.
- Originally it was a portmanteau of "stalker-fan." Think "super fan."
  
  It was actually a reference to Eminem's song "Stan" about an insane fan who murders his family or something.
  
  Let's take that etymology one step further: "fan" comes from "fanatic", so a stan is a stalker fanatic. Which somehow has become a positive term in some circles.
  
  Ooooooohhh! I never made that connection.
Well, if they are smart they will just migrate to Bluesky.

I gave up on trying to get people to Mastodon.
- Yeah it seems like most Brazilian twitter users have gone to bluesky. I'm glad that so few went to threads actually.
- What's the problem? They're just not sure which instance to go with?
  
  The problem is having instances. If you tell the average Joe to join Mastodon and they see there's 10 different links for Mastodon they'll just give up and move on, it's too much complicated effort for them.
  
  Its the absolute lack of algorithm. No, really. I know Mastodon toots it as a feature, but without an algorithm to keep people scrolling most people just close the app and do something else. People who don't understand instances would just go to mastodon.social anyway, but since no mastodon instance is actively trying to keep its users engaged 24/7, people naturally realize they have better things to do than to use social media all say.
  
  Which is better for humanity, but bad for retention.
  
  "The internet is the blue 'e' swirl thing on my computer's home screen."
  
  I think there's a cultural difference too. Bluesky is much closer to (a subsection of) twitter culture pre-musk than anything else. Weather you think that's good or bad is a matter of taste but it is probably the easiest thing to get people who like pre-musk twitter to switch to.
Like the “Come to Brazil!” comments on every music video or concert on youtube.
Why are they all Brazilian?
Hey I’ve had a couple chats with Taylor. She’s real nice. Cool to see her posted on lemmy.

38 comments