Today, I realized I was cross-posting all of my blog entries on LinkedIn without any filter at all. It took me a few weeks to realize this because I have it blocked in my system. In fact, I blocked every single social media platform I’ve ever been on. I gave up on social media last year, and I don’t trust myself. As soon as I have spare time, I jump into a web to waste time. I need a few days of seeing a DNS error on my browser to stop using a platform, and a few weeks to totally forget about it.

But I have to admit that it might be detrimental for me and that it is nice to still play the game of posting there from time to time (by there, I mean Twitter and LinkedIn, as they were the only places I ever posted consistently).

I found a way to post the stuff I write here from a feed to LinkedIn, but I made a small mistake and used the feed that contains every single entry. This is basically spamming my contacts on LinkedIn because it is a business-oriented platform, and I bet they don’t care about my running posts, for example. Moreover, I use LinkedIn in a very uncommon way, as I don’t accept unknown profiles. All the people I have there are humans I met somehow. So the chances for them to already know my personal stuff are higher. I deleted the posts as soon as I found this, and I’ll fix the cross-posting.

Another example of this approach, but without the mistake of spamming, is Fedora Planet. I have a category for my Fedora-related posts that automatically appear there.

I like to post the way I’ve been doing it recently on my personal page. It is a mix between Twitter and a blog. I don’t overthink what I write; I write whatever I want as often as I want. But occasionally, I do cool things that I should promote, not only because the promotion is good for me but because they might be interesting for someone who doesn’t read my blog. Which is everyone. Discoverability is extremely low outside social media, and search engine results are getting worse and worse. I am looking at you, Google. Blogs are obliterated.

My closest friends are always aware of my endeavors because I chat with them every day, but not everyone I used to interact with on social media before I stopped using it uses RSS or the Fediverse (the two methods for following this page). One could argue that if I did not miss the interactions, I would be content without them, and while that may be true, it does not do me any favors as I am rapidly disappearing like a ghost. It’s hard to talk to me now unless we work together on something.

As much as it might seem to me that we are in a post-social media world, we are not. I might be, but it is not true for everyone, and it’s a bit selfish to think that people are going to start using what nerds like me like to use. On the other hand, if I feed their platforms, I am encouraging something I am against, and I suffer. Oh, life and its dichotomies!

I wonder if I should do the same thing I do on LinkedIn for Twitter. Takes are more than welcome.