mary's note: i started writing this on november 18, 2022 and didn't finish it. it's here now. below:

let me start off by saying i don't think twitter's going to die. i say this because i genuinely can't imagine a world without twitter, but i guess people felt that way about myspace too? to an extent? actually i take that back because if the reports are correct that they had 7k employees at the beginning of november 2022 and now (nov. 18) they have 900... idk if recovery will take years to rebuild. but i don't have a doomer mindset just yet, though all of this has made me think about my relationship to an online space. i liked twitter because it had a really great search function and was incredibly user-friendly and simple. i often see people complain that 'twitter is a hellscape' and breeds toxicity, which, it can, but it's also dependent on who you follow so that may be a you problem.... i thought it was incredibly educational and i liked how threads and replies made the space for conversation, but could also be muted or ignored so that not all contributions had to be given airtime.

i don't think any current social media site can replace it because first... most have search functions that are so bad and not conducive for finding quality, niche communities. not that the communities that live on twitter are top tier, but rather offer a good meeting ground to build off of. i know i don't have the tools or knowledge to discuss search engines and web archives but anecdotally, as an avid searcher, i can tell you that searching things now feels really bad. i can't believe i am saying this but truly pinterest is one of the best image databases available because it pulls from so many sources and does a good job at grouping similar results. was google images always ass? it feels like it yields 10 relevant results before veering off into something i had no idea existed. also, do you remember when you would search something and it would have pages and pages of hits - you thought you would never see a google page with 0 results. i frequently get 0-2 results now.. is that a product of better or worse search engines? or maybe as i am older i am looking up more detailed items? i will say it's eerie to see a virtually blank google page... like i am standing on the edge of the internet T_T anyway. i say all of this because if twitter gets effed up severely and i can't look up the most unnecessary string of keywords to find a fanfiction edit. hmm well i may have a freak out¹.

the first two sections of this blog post were written in 2022 and the rest was written today, feb. 24th, 2023 so i can tell you now that twitter is still there, mastodon didn't take off like they thought it would (too confusing!!), tumblr exists, with its current population fending off ex-tumblrinas who crawl back to the site every few months then abandon it in 4 days. but like i said, twitter is still chugging along even though random embarrassing features are added or taken away at by elon in very public manners.

it's unsettling to live a life online such as mine. i try to save, archive, bookmark, screenshot, preserve what i can but sometimes it feels like virtual clutter that must be neatly filed away, probably never accessed again. but at least it's there? on my iphone 5 or on a hard drive or in the body of an email i sent to myself. i think i should get into scanning and digitizing, i've found some of the best resources on old blogspots and livejournals from people who knew just how easily things get lost. my favorite old website is jansgraphics.com . jan is a woman with an interest in online graphics and she uses her site to share blinkies, dolls, smileys, buttons, glitters, with the rest of us. she categorizes images into their respective topic, makes virtual quilts using image squares, and has overall neatly displayed these forgotten gems. i don't think its an exaggeration to say that without jan, many of these pieces of art would be unrecoverable. another thing about jan's website is that i cannot figure out when the last time it was accessed or updated. there's a calendar widget on the home page that shows the correct month and date, but the day of the week is off. like today, for example, is Friday, February 24th but her widget says TUESDAY!! February 24th. spooky... it also says February 123 at the very top so it's been broken but somehow manages to at least give us a month and date. whatever. i just hope she is doing well and knows some of us are still benefitting from her hard work.

realizing now this post has gone every which way. i have to get back to work.

-mary

1. btw there is a youtube video that i have been looking for for YEARS at this point and i'm so disgusted with youtube's search feature because it hasn't brought be back to this video despite going through pages and pages of results. anyway. can anyone link me to the video of one guy doing a lip sync snippet of every tony winner for best actress in a musical up until like 2013? i don't remember his name or the video title but i feel like it was EVERY TONY WINNER DIVAS and i remember he made it in anticipation of a Tony Awards in the 2010s. i think his performance is important in preserving the history of musical theatre.↩