Ah that’s why :) I’ve also been having some type-checking issues, so I didn’t catch it there.

Not trying to be negative, but instead letting go of a platform I’ve felt compelled to use for over a decade as someone who calls/called themselves a photographer.

Building your own thing is more effort at the start, but so much less mental friction once it’s running, and I highly recommend it.

Over 12 years later, IMO things are even worse on the platform side. But that’s why I made a blog in the first place.

The only downside is that nobody will see it — but when 99% of engagement is bots, does that even change things?

I dug up a paper I wrote in 2012 for an English course on cyberculture, where I argued that Flickr was dehumanizing photography via typical Web 2.0 technologies that distance the artist/author from the work by focusing on the output r.e. mashing everything up in the explore page.

Not fun when I had to do it for digital communications jobs, and definitely not fun when I’m just trying to do it for a hobby.

Finding the correct hashtags, posting to a certain crop, dealing with the image quality reduction, etc. etc. just to get some bots to comment “nice!”, in an effort to compete for attention against memes, ads, videos, reels, and now more and more AI slop.

Also the first time I’m building a site like this without the intention to monetize it in some way, so it feels a lot more cozy to work on. No pressure, just posting what we feel like. Kinda like I feel about posting here where I barely have followers.

We achieved peak cellphone in 2008 with a 78g, 10mm thick candybar whose 320p LCD screen showed off animated wallpapers. My only complaint was, ironically, no headphone jack. Also a finicky charging port — if that didn’t go, I probably would’ve gone a few more years before switching to a smartphone.

I thought it might be a Sony — never seen a stills camera before but we had a CD-based Sony Camcorder growing up. iirc you could put them straight in the DVD player to watch