📓️ On the transition from diaries to blogs to social media, a reflection

This year, my most assiduous followers know, I enjoy the privilege of not having to take the final exam: I already gave enough last year, while now I find myself in the much worse vortex of university. But, for those who don't give my online profiles the necessary attention: it's okay, you've discovered it now.

No longer going to school, it is inevitable that an entire calendar year has passed for me without ever writing the classic essay and, although I absolutely do not miss returning home with a broken shoulder and a maimed hand - the result of writing hundreds of words by hand on paper and then even producing a fair copy — I have to admit that not having to write is quite sad.
Obviously, since I like writing, I have never stopped doing it on my own, in fact, I have increased the frequency quite a bit. Now... it's true that this blog hasn't lived here for a year, but it barely survives, but my predictions from six months ago regarding my new microblog (on the article written as < em>resocontocttof the 2023 publications) have proven to be quite spot on, and I always manage to put at least a few hundred words a day up there. (I would like to do more, but time is a tyrant.)

"The track on the blogs"

You will have already noticed that this is not a theme, because I fear that in a school paper it would cost me dearly to start with such powerful digressions, so I hope that now you will not run away if I say that here, today, I want to take advantage of this to develop one of the tracks proposed in this year's Italian test.
Partly for the meme, partly out of whim, but deep down also partly out of nostalgia, in fact, I decided to just take a look at this year's rehearsals... three days late, of course, because time is a despot, but time is relative when you don't have a 6 hour limit to do something!

Leaving aside the math test which, yes, I really only opened that one for the meme (I don't understand a damn thing!), it was inevitable that at least the Italian test had some good proposals, and of all of them today I'm choosing one one which, given this context, is quite meta: the C2, of the type of "critical reflection of an expository-argumentative nature on current issues"... The name is a ball, yes, so the I would immediately stop quoting the MIUR text and get to the point; first, however, the track:

What role do blogs have?

At the risk of being (even if it were just seeming...) a broken record, I repeat: this is not a topic, don't run away, I beg you! As much as I like to keep the experience of this writing genuine, that is, starting and finishing without going to look at how others on the internet have followed the same path as me, I cannot help but approach the topic in my usual ways, as with the other articles on my blog, also telling my personal story, and... do you understand, at this point, why I say that "it's meta"?

As a bizarre girl on the Internet who always has to make herself known, I couldn't help but talk about blogging on my own blog, taking as inspiration some text that comes from a book; something that is part, so to speak, of the old frontier of sharing one's thoughts with the general public... something that however has not at all been supplanted by new technologies. However, it is inevitable that, in our world, made up of mortal beings with limited time at their disposal (that dictator always comes back into play...), every new thing that arrives must always (at least in part) replace something old, otherwise we wouldn't even talk about it, because no one would ever even know about it... so, where's the catch?

Diary against news

Blogs, in fact, have not eliminated books, which are still written and read at full force (at least, relatively), but upon their arrival they curiously took the place of something opposite: the diary, a form of intimate writing par excellence, generally never aimed at public enjoyment, and certainly not open to second-hand comment or sharing. To develop his thoughts, the author of the text starts from this assumption, which is objectively true: many people who lived before the Internet, whether I know them or centuries ago, used to keep the classic personal diary in a one way or another... while today, despite l (non-functional) illiteracy is at an all-time low practically all over the world, something with exactly those characteristics is not at all common. What happened? Do people magically no longer have personal thoughts to process and retain? Obviously not: the ways have simply changed and, this is the point of the discussion, the objectives for which it is done.

It should be clarified not to ridicule the text, but simply to establish a more accurate context, which can be read a mile away from the fact that this was written in 2014: while it also rightly talks about social media, from what little we know only thanks the track can be said to focus mainly on blogs, but blogs are as good as dead after ten years. Ten years are practically a historical era in the information society, so much so that blogs in the strict sense actually didn't even have time to kill the diary, before being killed in turn by social media (including some that they are so-called microblogs, but not only). Personal websites dedicated to the public writing of one's ideas are carried out by only two categories of people: digital artists and/or technology nerds (here I am), and those for whom writing is first and foremost a job (writers, journalists, researchers, etc...), who in their free time also dedicate themselves to a more informal but still substantial form.

Nowadays, unfortunately, normal people are content to use social platforms in a banal way, and to do increasingly micro blogging, because the fashion that existed in the early years of the new millennium was immediately eclipsed; in a sense, the standard of average blogs has risen greatly, as they are now used intentionally to critically address issues and spark "engaged" discussions, and are increasingly less collections of daily memoirs. This detail, as anyone in a similar position to mine knows well, is not as small as it seems, and it is right to keep it in mind for later.

Diary become novelty

Regardless of which technologies are preferred by young people today, the point of those two pages remains: digital has distorted the concept of the diary, which today exists first of all as a means of exposing oneself, and not to gather. The topic is particularly interesting, since today's situation is not only a consequence of technological evolution, but of the evolution of society in relation to that of technology. For most people, myself included, the idea that writing one's thoughts digitally is more comfortable, flexible, intriguing and safe than the romantic but too old pairing of pen and paper is acceptable; however, using a virtual medium does not automatically mean giving up secrecy or introspection.

Anyone can very well compose files on their device and leave them there only for themselves, perhaps even protecting them with encryption, undoubtedly safer security than a creaking padlock using a mass-produced key. In fact, it's technically even easier to keep things to yourself than keeping one of the modern online diaries, which requires you to create a profile, configure settings and, in extreme cases, even pay attention to what you write, so as not to end up banned from the service. But then, why don't we write in private anymore, even though it is easier than in the past (although, certainly, at the same time, writing in public is also much easier than in the past)?

My complicated story

I have tried to find an answer to this question a few times, for years now, at least since I stopped using the various digital platforms superficially. In reality, in fact, since late childhood I have been sharing what I want to say in one way or another thanks to the Internet, having first started with YouTube (doing gameplay and some computer tutorials), and then very slowly becoming passionate about creating sites web in early adolescence, and using chat groups both throughout this time and a little later. However, it never happened to me that I wanted to share, systematically and with a more ethereal audience, things that were more private or not strictly related to my digital activities, until I started using Instagram for short periods, some time after the explosion of stories.

In any case, these are volatile things (as the nature of the format required), which if I hadn't been able to publish there would probably have ended up simply forgotten, in some lost chat or in the black hole of my gallery, because I had never perceived the attraction of keeping a personal register in which to write my little things. Most likely, and this is perhaps also due to my emotional immaturity at the time, the format also instilled a bit of fear in me, not really being able to imagine what I would have to write in the long term, and above all why never; on social media at least I could meet new people with whom I could share opinions, passions and moments of lightheartedness, giving them the opportunity to get to know small fragments of my life just as I could get to know theirs. Later, however, Instagram was starting to get boring, and I stopped using it for good.

From Telegram onwards

At this point, for a good while I didn't really share anything in particular about myself in public, but I did talk in a few chats, and usually not about directly personal things. Sometimes I shared memes, and I continued with them, having after a few months also created a very small Telegram channel where I reposted several (very, very cringe and not at all kek). Small detail: Telegram is a messaging service, but it has always played the role of an alternative social platform for many, to the point that even those behind it have worked hard on it over the years. Up there every now and then, in such a spontaneous way that I had almost forgotten about it now, I happened to send ironic messages of my own, or reply to those of the other administrator. Some also referred to things I did or that happened to me, but the focus was never really on me.

To tell the truth, little by little the publications I created on that channel slowly increased over the months, until, almost randomly, with a pretext that is actually a bit 'Funny, I didn't have the idea of creating a second channel where I could only publish spontaneously, without the uncontrolled reposts of memes. This channel (which in reality was also born with two new admins, but where I was still the one talking more), has perhaps over the months actually become a sort of diary open to the public, with me publishing less and less at random, and on topics that were slowly less and less virtual, but without me even realizing it, because two hands weren't enough to count all the layers of irony. In the latter case I am simply talking about OctoVoLTE, which in the past 5 years has evolved together with me and my way of writing, still existing today as my very active microblog, as I mentioned in 'start.

The "greve zì" era

In part, it is right now as I write that I realize how, in that public place, I was gradually looking for a sort of secret intimacy over time, but which was not a real isolation. It started out as a place to make jokes about me or shallow personal moments of mine, but over the months and years it increasingly became a place to write about things that were more private and that I felt like I couldn't really say anywhere else. Meanwhile, I became progressively more and more mentally unwell, for reasons that were totally unintelligible to me and to others at the time; certainly writing on the channel, to also have a few laughs about my inexplicable problems with other people, was in this sense helpful in venting and distracting myself, since I wasn't actually able to resolve the issues that lay beneath those constant messages of mine, ironic but perhaps objectively worrying.

However, just as the stakes increased, I started to feel that writing all that stuff like that, in public, wasn't okay. Not that I was ashamed to show them to the little people who live on my computer, otherwise I wouldn't have started at all, but specifically I worried about what might happen if those who know me in person were able to read. In part I already had very few real friendships and I wanted to avoid blowing them up badly, showing myself as obviously ill as well as simply weird, but in part I was perhaps also afraid that my parents would find out something and get worried, or they would ground me, or go figure out what... Realistically, using a nickname that I had never used before, it would not have been easy to find the channel for someone who knew me in person and would have tried to look for it, but... sometimes the goddess Luck tends some very bad jokes, so it was more than logical for me to make the channel private, so that I could continue writing as I was doing, without worrying about the possibility that someone could link my contents to my physical person.

An unexpected diary

If I think about it a little (even if, after all these years, I don't have a precise idea), perhaps even in this now semi-private diary I didn't write everything I would have liked, and that I would have I could in total confidentiality, but I still shared many, many things. So many that, wanting to convert the channel back to public some time later, I had to delete all the messages older than a certain amount, because I'm pretty sure I've shared things that, although totally harmless in themselves, if appropriately triangulated with enough patience would have made it possible for any malicious actors to obtain some of my personal information, and this is not the case; However, the time needed to review years of messages, to delete only the few at risk, would have been too much, so first I made private copies, and then I made the uncomfortable decision to delete everything in complete silence (with a script).< /p>

In any case, I have vague memories of having perhaps written loose private notes in those cases in which the channel was not enough, but the thing never took root in me as an activity to research, because otherwise the channel satisfied me as a register of the days. Before recently, however, I still didn't realize that this channel of mine was nothing more than a modern diary, because in my head the diary was something written in a certain way, and not at all associated with a sequence of messages (albeit chronological), written perhaps in broken Italian, and with stupid images in the middle.

Towards the Fediverse

I know I seem largely out of track at this point but, first of all, on my site I'm in charge; secondly, however, what I want to illustrate is how, up to a certain point, my digital writing existed for the purpose of expressing myself in an extremely genuine way, without those denaturations brought by the mechanics of the Internet, despite being in public. This, in fact, until I rediscovered the archetype of the most traditional social networks, thanks to the Fediverse. Even the stones should know it by now, but, when in doubt, it is right to reiterate what the Fediverse is on a practical level (and not a technical one, a topic that does not concern us today): it is an environment in which there are social platforms very similar to the more or less commercial ones in vogue, in their functions, but which are not controlled by Big Tech , they are not based on abusing users for profit, they communicate perfectly with each other rather than being so-called "walled gardens", and moderation is very effective. There are tons of them, but the platform I started with was Mastodon, very approachable being similar to Twitter and having the largest Italian community (at the time the only one with a good critical mass, in reality). On paper everything seems extremely positive, and I started to get closer and closer to the world of federated social networks, meeting many nice people and very few worrying ones (which is not a given on commercial social networks), starting to slowly put more and more emphasis on 'having my microblogging there, rather than on the Telegram channel — which to be honest was becoming very stagnant, with so many people no longer active, but no one new discovering it and coming.

It's about this time that a certain decline began, and the thing that I hadn't realized before was a diary, now I wasn't realizing how it was less and less of a diary, with each new message I sent on any of my profiles. One of the considered strong points of the Fediverse is that (for better or worse, net of some very limited experiments) there are no algorithms that propose the various posts to users, but rather these arrive only chronologically (as Twitter also did in the ancient times). The reason why this would be positive is that, since there is no machine that decides based on secret criteria (and difficult to exploit in its favor) which messages to propose more at the expense of others - something that Big Social uses precisely to keep its users glued as much as possible to the service, all in the name of profit and often in defiance of any morality — users would not only have real control over their experience, but could express themselves authentically, without having to choose between pleasing the supreme algorithm or having a post that will not be seen by a single soul.

The dilemma of numbers

As in everything, however, the more complex a system is, the more it contains entropy and unpredictable variables (and a social network is in this case a truly ideal one), and the more its reality deviates from ideal principles; in particular, since time is a tormentor, how can something not go wrong if you give it total control? Whether they are proprietary or community-based, the big problem with social media is the numbers, and the climb to increase them more and more: thinking about it now I realize how, every time I shared something in those cases, the priority was no longer expressing what I felt in a given moment, but to express what perhaps I felt like, but at the same time it would have allowed me to accumulate more numbers than the previous time; and, when this didn't happen, the disappointment was palpable.

I have never really abandoned the Telegram channel, sometimes using bots to automatically republish from there to the federated world and vice versa, and simply doing it by hand in extreme cases. I never reached the level of downloading data from the federated network to calculate interesting statistics and thus have a strategic advantage over others, but only due to lack of time, because the desire was strong... but I certainly did some mental calculations, regarding the moments in which to publish something, and at what pace, in an attempt to obtain those additional single impressions, which would then have to be transformed into at least a few retoots, so as to generate some other impressions and so on. All for what, then, to reach new followers who, due to the temporal ordering, would have usually missed my posts anyway? This is the thing that, at a certain point, made me lose patience, and a good part of my interest: the problem was not that what I wrote wasn't interesting, because the interactions arrived when the stars were well aligned, but that no person ever noticed them because of the system... which is exactly what the Fediverse promised wouldn't happen. The situation got extremely worse when - it seems like a paradox - many new users began to arrive who had fled from Elon Musk's Twitter, cyclically, every time he said or made one of his huge nonsense: having more users, there are certainly many eyes more (2 for each user!)... but alas, inevitably the background noise also gets a lot louder, and getting a message to someone who might appreciate it becomes a real undertaking.

It scares me to think that I've been trapped in this situation for more than a year, having reversed it just a few months ago by pure chance, and that I'm only now realizing it all. Even though I had already declared all my attempts to expand my kingdom to have failed, this was still a bug stuck in my head, and the interest I had lost in composing a digital diary in a manner disinterested by others did not magically return; for a good period, therefore, on the Telegram channel the most I sent were memes with personal comments, and sometimes the story of things I did while spending my time with computers, but without that intimate atmosphere that was once central .

The right wrong solution

I practically have to thank fate for how, totally by chance, last December, the idea of moving to the WordPress content manager to manage all my publications came to mind; the idea was to be able to retransmit everything automatically on Telegram with a bot, and on the Fediverse via the dedicated plugin, so as to resolve the constant doubt about where to publish what, and to simply be able to go back to writing as in the past. Looking back now, this idea also had a harmful basis, being based on this sick thought that I kept gravitating towards, but the result was totally positive, despite it not being what I wanted at all; this is precisely why I have to thank luck. It's been since I started going with this new pace that I think this topic deserves an article in itself (just call me "procrastinator maxima"), but the key point of these last few months is that I've almost returned to the literary splendor of the past. Unfortunately and fortunately, my times as edgelord¹ are a closed chapter, but of things I still have a lot to say, in fact...

Getting used to the new system, and how it was more convenient to write there than on Telegram, I started to get into the habit of writing a lot in single posts; something that not only blew away any chance I had of relevance on the Fediverse, but actually even made a couple of old followers (not too many, thankfully) turn up their noses. Initially, I was a little worried but, for some reason, this time, the desire of my intrusive thoughts to leave my mind intact to be distributed with dignity into the ether won, and not the desire to continue adapting to commercial mechanics. I called it simply "microblogocctt" when I started, but, now averaging more than a thousand characters per post, I realize that calling it a microblog is a bit out of place by modern standards — they are just some substantial diary pages — but that's the beauty of it. Enough time has passed by now to say that it's no longer about the frenzy of new software, but instead I'm really enjoying the experience as a whole. Of course, I necessarily have a completely different way of writing compared to the past, but at the base there is the same strength that once animated me.

My final diary

Having only recently realized that what I once had was a diary, and what I still wanted is practically a diary, I also had the pleasure of discovering one of the key features of this format: how cool it is to end up reading something written months or years before, comparing that past snapshot with the present context, perceiving the differences between the different "versions" of one's person without even having to think about it too much, reflecting on everything and projecting one's mind to an old positive moment; or at least, a negative moment from which, thanks to writing, one was ideally able to draw something positive. The moments in which, to say something new, I somehow end up linking to past posts are particularly special: not only is it an excuse granted to me by fate to look back at what I wrote at that moment, but it gives me the impression of the continuous development of everything, is proof that the things I choose to write do not follow one another at random and do not remain an end in themselves. I only regret it when, busy with very heavy commitments or with my mind running out of ideas, I skip a day without writing anything, because it is another opportunity to add to this fading literary baggage of mine; However, making a worry about it would mean once again losing sight of what you are doing, because it is normal that in everyday life there are moments that are not only good, not only bad, but also terribly banal and irrelevant, and therefore cannot be transformed into letters.

At the same time, however, writing in public remains a prerogative for me, not only because of the possible immediate search for interactions with other people, but also more generally because I like the idea of building a real knowledge base, which anyone can read in the future, to have fun or to reach deeper reflections, exactly as I do with other people's notes; exactly as we all actually do by reading those words, written by individuals, that history has brought down to us, after their death.

The reality of social media

All this, there is no fuss, is in direct contrast with the direction of social media. The technology behind it can actually support somewhat anachronistic ways of doing things (otherwise my system with WordPress wouldn't even work), but that's not the direction users are going in any case. If you adapt to the system you have the chance to win some recognition, but if you don't adapt you are guaranteed to lose: it is therefore not difficult to understand why the majority of people on the Internet live in the cage that I felt for a bit'. Leaving aside any fashions, which by definition come and go, the system does not allow for someone to be seen in their lowest moments, because sadness and compassion do not generate the same involvement that anger, boasting and envy do. they assure, and therefore: if something is unpleasant, there must be a culprit behind it to take it out on, because sterile complaints are annoying; and, if something is pleasant, then it must somehow instill a desire in those who look at it, or it must somehow be the expression of a desire, otherwise it doesn't matter. Practically, in itself the act of publishing on social media must generally be an attempt to elevate oneself to a myth.

It's clear that I'm generalizing, but, if you think about it, the things that make a splash on social media can always be traced back to one of these categories, because - once again it returns - human nature is pretty tough. The result of this equation is that, in the attempt to obtain something for oneself, one ends up writing only for unclear others, who can only appreciate them if at that given moment they don't have something even better in front of them. Predictably, people here generally don't re-read their older posts, they don't reflect on their past selves by looking at what they produced, and I know that in reality many have no problem deleting old posts after a while without retaining any backup, private or not. The latter, among other things, is also the direct consequence of another mechanism that social media imposes, namely the continuous pursuit of the freshest topics, with a pace that makes it difficult to stop and reflect, with the final result of having writings that lose all practical sense hours or days after publication.

Something halfway between the crisis

Wanting to close as I started, it must be said that the environment of Telegram channels (and those specifically, because, apart from self-managed microblogs like mine, there is nothing else on the same level, for ordinary people) is peculiar, in that it still seems like a middle ground between these extremes. Much more than in other online social places, users who create a channel as strictly personal there, as long as it is not linked to a specific theme, end up publishing a bit of everything, or almost.

It's easy to see, simply by walking around, that this is the case, and that some of the publications have a similar smell to what mine had in the early days, with several administrators also sharing their flaws, as well as the victories . In all likelihood, the exposition is probably filtered anyway — we can simply see what is published, but we have no idea what is never said — and certainly the introspection is nowhere near the levels of the diary it once was — the format reduced to very few words at a time makes looking back to make comparisons tiring and distracting, especially looking for old "pages" - but, evidently, the fact is that the classic alternative is no longer attractive. Even in these cases, however, there often remains the desire to reserve ourselves from those who have a certain weight on us; but, unlike Anne Frank, who in her limited situation could not do anything but use her imagination, thanks to the Internet we can find non-imaginary friends with whom we can confide in each other, and in the meantime perhaps even share some laughter, opening up our diaries.

The important thing is attention

I think that my experience, illustrated in this way, almost speaks for itself, but to conclude: taking into account the average user, it is true that the move towards blogs first, and from shortly thereafter until today social networks and microblogs, it changed the standards of diary writing for the worse. It's too easy to lose sight of the real reason why our soul makes us feel we have to write, ending up chasing fame, following those who ran before us; telling, just as Caminito suggests, a myth of the self, on a support which, to be truly useful, should instead tell the totality of the self, and do so to one's own self.

Ultimately, I believe that it is not impossible to keep a totally public diary on the internet, inevitably distorted in its form, but keeping the deepest meaning unchanged, and therefore writing exactly what past generations would have written in their own chronicles; undoubtedly, however, it is easy to stumble. I must confess that even now, sometimes, I perhaps thought a little too much before writing something, despite my new awareness and desire to really want to use my microblog to express myself freely, but... one advantage of WordPress is that I can write in public when I feel like it, and simply save in private when that's not the case; so, in reality, now it no longer happens that I avoid writing something just because I couldn't share it, but I simply follow the flow, I do what I really feel, choosing case by case and therefore living correctly, and I would advise you to do the same. same. It doesn't matter whether it's mainly private or public, keep a diary, but do it well!

🏷️ Notes and References

The decorative cover image is obtained via generative artificial intelligence by Microsoft.