Cyberspace II

Prepare yourself, because we're about to jack into ᑕ¥βєяรקค¢є.

I wrote another post called cyberspace previously, which is why this one is Cyberspace The Second. This post, instead of being a stream of consciousness about the nature of the Internet, is about the new social media site Cyberspace! I really enjoy being on this website, unlike most other social media sites. No ads, no games, just a simple, terminal-like interface. It's rare to see anyone post images; most people just "use their words," as said on the join page of this website.

It is sort of like a walled garden. You have to make an account in order to look at anything on the website, but I see that as a necessary precaution against the army of robots now scraping every single web page that exists. This also helps generally protect against spammers. It's really easy to make an account, anyways, and you don't get any email notifications from the site, besides to confirm your email. That's one aspect of why I like it so much, too.

The site does nothing to demand your attention. There are no algorithms trying to suck you in, no notifications demanding you check it every 5 minutes. Everybody's feed is sorted in chronological order. When you make a post, you can see it appear at the top immediately. Further, the only way to engage with other posts is to reply to them. There's no liking or disliking. If you like something, you reply to it. If you don't like something, you ignore it.

In a way, Cyberspace represents everything I wanted to accomplish by making this website. I wanted a place where I could just throw my thoughts for anyone to read. You can do that on Twitter, Reddit, Mastodon, Bluesky, whatever, but there is just no engagement. One or two random people might reply to or like your post, but there is no sense that you're talking to anybody. When I make a post on Cyberspace, however, I can guarantee that someone is going to at least see it because I know that it will appear at the top of the feed. Conversely, the algorithm decides who sees posts on any other popular social media platform.

To me, that is the core of Cyberspace. Most people engage with the site through that system. Posts can be browsed by topic, which functions like the hashtag system seen on other sites like Twitter. My personal favorite is wizardposting. If you want to find out why, all you have to do is make an account and go look at that topic. It's a community of wizards just trying to learn from each other. I love it. Anyways,

Another aspect of Cyberspace is that it is not as great of an experience on mobile. The kind of person that this website appeals to is, well, someone like me. I enjoy engaging with the Internet through my PC. I dislike browsing web pages on my phone; the screen size is just too small. For the large majority of people, however, their phone is the primary way in which they see web pages and social media. It's undeniable that mobile phones have made that process easier. While this could be seen as a disadvantage of Cyberspace, I see it as an advantage.

By having a maybe not-so-great mobile experience, it encourages more thought to be put into using it. It's not a website that is meant to be trivially checked every hour. You log into it and you log out of it, just like you had to do in the old Internet. Of course, most people don't actually do that nowadays (cookies have minimized it). Still, there are times where people are active and not active. Cyberspace does not demand your attention, it demands your focus. When you use it, it is not a distraction; it is your pathway to communicate with other people. That, I think, is what social media was really meant to be.

You can find me in Cyberspace here. There's also a new link in the header with the other social media icons. I'll be making posts on Cyberspace when I publish new entries to this blog, so follow me on there if you want updates!

By the way, I am writing this on a new hall effect keyboard and, man, this thing is smooth. I feel like I'm on typing on clouds. It's the Keychron K2 HE for those interested.