I’ve been POSSE-pilled. POSSE stands for Post on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. Here’s a link to an image of what POSSE looks like.
Let me explain:
Existing in a digital space between July 2024 - November 2024 radicalized my views on what individual engagement with social platforms and publishing should look like. I happen to live in a political “battleground” state in the U.S. so pretty much any time I engaged ANY sort of digital media (social, streaming, news/information) I found myself deluged with targeted advertising, and if it wasn’t some super PAC screaming at me, it was the newsletters or newspapers I follow, or it was the general vibe of lament/panic in most of my social media silos.
So I reached a personal breaking point where I’m weighing that I would like to maintain some sort of digital presence (for professional, communal, and utilitarian reasons), but my direct engagement with all the specific platforms I use is absolutely toxic. Additionally, so many of the major social media sites are designed for surfing more than creation (the photography sites are not as bad, but even the video-centric sites want you cruising the algorithm more than posting your own stuff). Doing or creating something just feels better than sinking a chunk of time into doom scrolling an algorithmic feed, and I need hardwired systems to get me to create instead of consume.
So, I decided a hard reboot was necessary. For a conceptual/theoretical framework I’ve adopted Alan Jacob’s sharing and reflecting engagement model. I needed a dedicated blog/site for publishing longform/reflective thoughts, and a space for posts like you’d find on Bluesky, Mastadon, Threads, etc. While I have my own Squarespace site that I’ve maintained since my graduate school days back in 2012-2014, I’ve decided the platform doesn’t quite give me the oomph I needed when considering the subscription cost. Therefore, I set up a Ghost site for my primary reflective writing/blogging project and a micro.blog site to serve as my POSSE hub for social media style sharing. I also signed up for a dedicated reading app that I can funnel newsletters and important RSS feeds too, or save articles to read later - this is particularly important for news websites where I don’t need (and probably can’t emotionally handle right now) a constant deluge of front-page news designed by editors to try and keep me hooked on the website.
A quick note about POSSE privilege - I have the disposable income that allows me too absorb the subscriptions necessary to set up these sites, and I have enough technical know-how and social capital with IT folks to create my own domains and customize these spaces the way I want. I think it’s worth the investment, for my mental health, and my creative and intellectual life. I’d be happy to help get you started if you are in a similar (exasperated) place like me.
We’ll see how this goes…
Links for where to find or follow me
A couple newsletter/RSS subscription opportunities if you want to spend less time on social media, but still are interested in engaging with my stuff:
You can see everywhere I have a presence on the web here. You can use this link to get a weekly email newsletter of all the things I post on my micro.blog site - this will include links to my Ghost blog posts, which I intend to announce each week on the micro.blog. If you want just an email newsletter of my longform blog posts you can sign up for that here, or sign up for the RSS feed with your RSS reader - just copy this link.
