I miss GEnie. And sff.net. And Livejournal (old school)

Thinking about community and especially the community of writing friends that I've engaged with over the years.

When I first started writing, GEnie was a popular place to hang out and network with other writers. Many of us then moved over to sff.net for discussion boards, and livejournal for blogging.

Then livejournal was bought by Russians, and sff.net shutdown, and let's not even mention the artist formerly known as Twitter. Facebook worked (kind of) for a time, but even with a ruthlessly curated friendslist the algorithms make it impossible for me to see posts that I'm actually interested in.

As the enshittification continues, and my friends scatter to different platforms, I'm wondering what's next. Is the future a mimeographed newsletter sent via snail mail to the friends I haven't seen in person in the past year? Or the telephone tree-like game we engage in at cons starting each bar conversation off with "Has anyone heard from X recently? How about Y--they deleted their social media accounts, does anyone know how they're doing? By the way, I heard from Z they just move to place and are loving it."

Sigh.