I've been using social media since long before the term "social media" was coined (e.g. Usenet, the earliest ARPANET mailing lists, etc.) I've avoided Facebook all along, used #Twitter quite a bit in its heyday (and maintain an account there that I keep locked now), and I used Google Plus quite heavily. I have accounts on Post (which is about to go dark, apparently), Bluesky (rarely look at it), Threads (hardly ever visit), etc.
Of course the scale of these can be vastly different. An ARPANET mailing list on the subject of wine tasting with a few hundred members was enough to trigger a Pentagon colonel coming out to sites to remind us all about appropriate usage of a Defense Department funded network.
That didn't change anything of course, and eventually DOD realized that such lists were pushing the evolution of email tools rapidly in very useful ways.
Did you know that the very first ARPANET mailing list Digest was for SF-LOVERS (science fiction discussion, obviously) and was created quickly as a "temporary" expedient because the direct (immediate) distribution list had gotten "too large" (probably still just hundreds) for available resources? The digest format created for that situation has remained largely unchanged since then and is still widely used on the Internet today.
I mention all this because in some ways #Mastodon is a throwback to those very early days (with Usenet being perhaps the closest parallel, given the Mastodon topological model). And Mastodon still manages to be quite "low pressure" in significant ways, even as your follower count goes up (which is the exact opposite of the situation on Twitter, even before Musk took over).
That is, when I check here in the morning, I don't usually feel the need to steel myself for a deluge of potential nastiness.
@lauren don't forget the very early #GratefulDead lists that thrived in early labs. Some of earliest uses. 1973 Stanford university artificial intelligence lab started distributing dead list. A lot of eatly deadheads went into early computing work. So they were all over it. Huge mailing lists. @sail (chapter 3: Beyond Whole Earth Catalog, in Heads)
Ahh... to be 18 yo, freshman in college, a local show, small venue, on Good Friday, four-twenty (though I didn't partake!), a beautiful spring evening, second row seats, my sixth show, my first Morning Dew. One of my favorite shows attended and immortalized as Dave's Picks 35. On this day 40 years ago...
Some more photos from 04/20/1984 at the Philadelphia Civic Center.
I have to give props to my daughter who hooked me up with use of her Adobe Creative Cloud license. The Photoshop Spot Healing Brush tool is absolute magic for cleaning dust and scratches from old negative scans.
#TheMetalDogArticleList #FarOutMagazine
Jerry Garcia explains his dislike for Eddie Van Halen
Grateful Dead guitarist and co-founder Jerry Garcia didn't particularly appreciate the sounds Eddie Van Halen constructed as a key part of their sonic identity.
These newly released studio outtakes from the #GratefulDead at the Mars Hotel, from Rhino, are delightful, a blend of unused instrumental and vocal tracks and new mixes. Just lovely listening. Thanks to Tim Satterwhite for the prompt. https://youtu.be/zpJw32y1blI?si=AmjRKHTBPc6tn-lH
#gratefuldead fans: There will surely be a "Blues for Allah" reissue in 2025. Will we get a comprehensive boxed set of the vast/important rehearsals... or something much smaller and extremely disappointing?
Here's a delightful little creature from those rehearsals/sessions: