Saturday, February 9, 2019

G+ Running Out of Hit Points


My G+ feed has been dwindling for a while thanks to Google's announcement that the platform would be shut down very soon. Now shit got real because if you'll notice there's no longer a G+ button below my blog posts. Also, can no longer leave comments on my blog via G+ and all previous comments left in that fashion are going to magically disappear in a puff of vaporous nothing. I did run the takeout download to get all my G+ stuff so it's sitting in a zipped archive on my hard drive. I'm not really sure what to do with it, to be honest.

And yeah, this all makes me sad. I know it makes a lot of people sad. G+, for me, has been a hub of creative fun for a good run of years. I also realize that some people didn't love G+ for various reasons, including the fact that the OSR, which was very strong on G+, includes a lot of politically right wing individuals. For some people on the left, a right wing person is a threat to their actual physical safety and having one hosted on a platform sends an unwelcome message to them. It's complicated. Not everyone agrees about it. It's a thing.

I have started using this blog more since the announcement and I plan to continue doing that. I'm also on Instagram and Facebook. I do have a Twitter, but I barely touch it. I also have a MeWe and I'm trying to use it more, but I just haven't gotten the habit of it down and so far it doesn't feel quite as cozy as G+. Maybe in time it will. I don't know.

The bottom line is that G+ is going away very soon and there's nothing to do about it. So no sense whining and wishing, I'm just going to move on and try to find a new groove. After all, Google isn't shutting ME down. Right? Right?!


4 comments:

  1. It's good to see a resurgent Doomslakers. In general, I am hopeful that a revitalized blog scene will kick off. It sorta feels like it is.

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  2. Hey James, are you on the OSR Planet (https://campaignwiki.org/osr/)? I've been enjoying discovered new OSR blogs through that.

    The G+ dying is hard, but it's actually opening up the OSR web a little bit (reemphasizing blogs & personal webs as opposed to a walled-garden system like G+).

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    1. It looks like Doomslakers is on the blog list on that site. Maybe someone added me, I can't remember. But yeah, I hope you're right.

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