Wicked are the Woke said the weak white bloke.

I think this is the primary reason (blog decline/social media rise). It is also why Google Reader shut down (trend to social networks, incl Google's own attempts back then).

I truly think that indie sites/blogs/feeds could make a comeback but it cannot be on a foundation of bloated software (WP).

nice, I mix in art curation :)

Here are a few old screenshots from a few of my sites running the software. There were various templates. Fully supported media feeds for "podcasting" etc.

OPML was heavily used to combine feeds (feeds of feeds) which aided the UI/UX side and also allowed for building "friend feeds" and "river of news" derived from RSS sources. Essentially RSS Aggregator turned into a social network model with server-side relayers as the glue.

XSLT templates were rendered on client-side browser which was a great way to slap a UI on an RSS feed when directly loading the RSS feed in browser. XSLT also has this document() function to pull in any other XML from anywhere which I leveraged for replies (inReplyTo extension namespace). OPML...

I mention JSON RSS because I ended up using XSLT as a fallback and integrated a JSON templating system as primary renderer. RSS XML was transformed to RSS JSON. Appending /json to any URL gave you the JSON version. Mind you, this was a long time ago so not as normalized. XSLT was cool though...

I have screencasts but not running anywhere now.
It was named RSSFTW and had a handful of domains running it. A very simple flatfile system where each RSS item was a text file and they were stitched together (and then cached ofc) to create feeds. XSLT for UI. JSONified RSS was also ~invented here.

Even worse, after name and phone # and pin to use sent to my phone, they tell me my chosen username was not available and to go back and try again. Inefficient and invasive.

And there is nothing anyone can do about it.... at least not efficiently and swiftly. It will be an apparatus for at least 4 years and many happily dumb people will love it. It will not be obvious... the power of it... and the effect of it... Now more than ever, the alt open platforms are critical!

These are strange times and I have things to say that maybe I will care more about reaching others. There is no reach on X for a large swath of people. Perhaps there is better opportunity here. So, I will spend less time on X and more on bluesky and remain open to new alternatives. Or build one.

Time to expand to bluesky and possibly other networks that exercise more openness and standards and self-sovereignty.

I use X as a public digital stream of consciousness. I can be bursty with publishing and I can also be absent for long periods. I output when I want and can, often during breaks from other work and life things. Zero likes matters not to me. X has been my primary presence since 2007 but it is time...

I don't believe there is even a board of directors at X.
State run media is a real possibility, if not already a reality.
What is and will continue to be truly amazing to witness is the amount of people who are on board with dystopian tones that may saturate our future.