Boles.xyz, Post.News and Pixelfed Are the New Social Media

I finally took steps to distance myself from three moldy, overdead, social media services. I deactivated my verified Facebook business page with 17,000 followers. I also deactivated my Instagram account. I made my verified, 47,000 follower, Twitter account, private. I let go of those social media services because all three have lost the common touch. They’re run by robots, mastered by intentional cruelty, subjected to bad human policy decisions, bothered by awful automation and, in one case, a sort of madman rules the nest. Today, none of those ideations of those social media services are what they were when they started, and I made the decision to no longer be a part of the “creative community”  that makes content for those services just so mega media can sell advertising off our hard work. Enough!



Continue reading → Boles.xyz, Post.News and Pixelfed Are the New Social Media

Questions Answered by NFT Artists

It was an honor to be one of 10 in the world to be involved with the initial Alpha Test of Facebook’s support of NFTsdigital collectibles — between June 27 and July 22. During the initial test period, I interviewed several NFT Artists from across the world who were kind enough to share their work, and time, to explain their Art in relation to the distribution and sale of Non-Fungible Tokens. Here is the content of those engaging conversations!

 

IAN JONES

Ian Jones NFT

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The Sponsored Post Brigade

I’m not sure what’s going on with this blog, and my verified Facebook page, but over the last few months, I’ve been getting lots of requests — more than usual — to add paid links in my old articles as well as being offered “thousands of dollars” to post advertising on my Facebook page.

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What We Have Become and What Cannot be Undone

We live in a selfish world where Social Media has become the public square replacing the private confessional and the anonymous donation box. We click a LIKE button and we feel better. We promote our private good deeds in an open airing and our righteousness quintuples in the amount of retweets we earn. This is all wrong and misguided. We shouldn’t do good things just to be rewarded. We must not aspire to be the hero of our own invention just because that’s the immature nattering standard of the day.

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Beware of Social Proofing for Verified Accounts on Facebook and Twitter

If you’re an author, or a publisher, or if you work in the entertainment field, getting your social media accounts Verified — or “socially proofed” for a condescending spin on a ridiculous social media marketing term — is important because Verification gives you status on the social networks and it provides you private avenues of access that regular accounts do not accord.

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Paris and the Superficial Memes of Selfieness Tragedy

Any tragic world event is an opportunity to convey meaning for profit — personally, politically, fiscally or morally — and the instant rise of the “Peace for Paris” logo designed by Jean Jullien “one minute” after the tragedy, and then immediately posting the image to Facebook and Twitter, begs a larger human question of “selfieness” and cynicism: Is an Artist trying to give hope against trafficking in evil, or is it all a rather cunning ploy to “make the meme” for a tragedy by propagating self-interest-as-a-logo over the perils of human interest?

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On Becoming a Mentor: Listen to the Birds

Memory is an acute thing. It can baptize you, take you over, reflect on where you’ve been and, in some extreme cases, incapacitate you. Memory can also warm, warn and welcome you — and this story is a matter of the latter in the name of one my earliest mentors and influencers, Rick Alloway. Yes is hard. No is easy. Rick Alloway was always a Yes Man in the most honorific possible way.

Rick gave me my start in radio at KFOR 1240 and KFRX 103 in Lincoln, Nebraska when I was 13-years-old, and he helped correct me, win me and convince me in every single way of the world. He was never harsh or cruel or condescending — even when you earned such treatment. His greatest talent was simply listening and being infinitely patient. In the radio advert below, Rick is in the front row wearing a mustache and I’m right next to him sporting the sun-sensitive hipster glasses.

Continue reading → On Becoming a Mentor: Listen to the Birds