hello, world!

*taps mic* is this thing on?

Ash

Ash

— 2 min read
Album cover for “Hello World: The Best of The Saddle Club.”
yes, hello world is a tech thing, but it always makes me think of this song from the saddle club, so enjoy this very large and blurry image

Hi friends! Welcome to my silly little blog, where in a time of large exploitative corporations having a monopoly on social media*, I've decided to go back to running a personal standalone blog like I did when I was 10 years old. This is largely inspired by my dear friend, Pi, who is far more eloquent that I am when it comes to talking about these larger social issues and has many very cool very good ideas that make me go "holy shit, yeah". ANYWAY, as mentioned in my about page, this is just my little semi-private space to yell into the void that is the world wide web, and have my friends yell back in the comments.

*I'm not going to go into my thoughts on social media here as they're very varied and nuanced and a topic for a whole other time, but if you're interested in a base overview of a few important main points, check out these articles (keeping in mind that I may not necessarily agree with 100% of what each of them say):

- Bill Ready: why social media turned toxic and how we can fix it
- Engagement, User Satisfaction, and the Amplification of Divisive Content on Social Media
- When The Truth No Longer Matters: How Social Media’s Engagement Obsession Is Killing Democracy
- The Grip of Giants: How Social Media Platforms Control People, Creativity, and Opinions
- How Tech Billionaires Screwed Us All

I have absolutely no clue how often I'll be updating this. If you want to keep up with these posts, you can subscribe and have them emailed when they're published, or utilise an RSS feed reader.[1] There will probably be a huge assortment of types of posts, from mini essays/rants to pictures of my cats.

Speaking of, here's some cat tax for you all as a reward for clicking on something outside of instagram/twitter/wherever you got here from.

Lulu and Freddie, two cats, all snuggled up on a cozy bed. Lulu, the black-and-white cat, is curled up against Freddie, the white cat with gray spots. They’re sound asleep, wrapped in each other’s paws as they snuggle up on a doona.
Look how cute my babies are!!! When they snuggle with each other I feel such an overwhelming wave of adoration and pride

Anyway, that is all from me for now! What do we think? Is this a fun idea? Do you agree with the general reasoning behind it? Is it something that you also might want to do? Leave a comment (or two, or ten) and let me know! Or just tell me how your day was or what your favourite colour is, I don't really mind :)

See ya next post!

-ash

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  1. Pi made a very good blog post explaining this entire concept and how to get it all set up here