Twittering

 When I planned my March retrospective, it was with a view to actually winding up the blog at the end of the month, fifteen years after I first began blogging. There were a number of reasons for this, which I won't go into (now, at least), but once again I've found that I just can't kill it off.

On the other hand, I'm not sure that I want to carry on with this blog, exactly as it has been since 2010.

I have never joined Facebook, and never will. I have never 'used' Twitter, although I have over the years had three accounts, initially for posting updates to the blog before mobile blogging (or even smartphones) were a thing. When I started looking for them last week, I realised that my latest one, started in 2017 and with a grand total of three posts, was @rivetcounter - say what you like, I cannot believe that that name hadn't gone years previously; you may recall that I was similarly astounded when I set up the Rivetcounter blog in 2016. I resurrected that Twitter account because no one blogs any more and there were a few people whose Twittering I've been keeping an eye on, and it seemed easier to follow them (and oh my god, Tim Dunn off the telly has just responded to a comment I made!)

I first heard of Twitter when Granny Buttons posted about his discovery of it in 2007. Back then it seemed, quaintly, like a good way for groups of friends to keep in touch, rather than the behemoth of news, celebrity, misdirection and scandal that it has become.

The thing is, now I'm trying to use it 'properly' I still don't like Twitter. I control this blog, but Twitter, to a far greater extent, controls me - what I see and how I see it. And goodness knows what its creepy little algorithms are doing with my data. The attraction of it, though, (although this is also a danger) is the lower expectations it engenders. Quick photo, few words, post done. None of this sitting down in front of the computer after a long day of ... er ... sitting down in front of the computer, which, as you might have noticed, frequently militates against posting anything at all. But that ease and quickness poses another risk as well, as many have discovered (rightly or wrongly) to their cost; that of posting something without thinking it through sufficiently, which I know would be a danger for me.

And it is an utter time sink. I'm following a grand total of three people now, but I'm already capable of getting lost in it and fifteen minutes or half an hour has gone by. Plus there's the thing we all know about of checking it every time you think of it to see if there's anything new. But, it's where people are now. It's where amateur broadcasting is done. Look at my blogroll - no one on it (nor me) has posted for at least a fortnight. None of the other old boat blogs has posted for a year and more. No one has commented on any of this month's posts (and I'm sorry if they weren't sufficiently interesting).

Yet I don't think I can stop blogging, even as sometimes I've thought I didn't want to continue either.

One thing I have been considering, as I expand the range of things I write about - and my own range of interests - is to transfer operations to Rivetcounter - not least because it feels like such a waste of a great name not to use it. For one thing, I'm thinking of - in various ways - getting a bit more into railways: something I've always liked, and have family connections with, but have been a bit daunted at the thought of getting sucked into. Maybe now is the time.

So I will keep blogging, sporadically, for a while longer (ask me again after twenty years) but maybe this is the time to have a refresh and a new approach.

What do you think?