A Manifesto.
Listen.
You need to unlink your feeds.
I understand why you did it. I’ve made the same mistake myself. But it’s hurting your friends, it’s hurting you, and it’s hurting the Internet. You need to stop.
You need to stop automatically dumping your feeds from one account into another.
Look, I know it’s tempting. New service, not sure how you’ll keep up with the ever demanding maw and there’s the “import your content” button, right there in the sign-up process. A quick trip through a login screen or an OAuth link and there you are: All your stuff automatically aggregated into a new one-stop-shop of the genius things that pop out of your head.
No muss, no fuss, right?
This is an illusory solution. It’s a false idol. It’s contributing to noise pollution on the Internet and the only people it helps are company execs who want to make spurious claims about “user engagement”. It’s diminishing the quality of your output and of others’ experiences.
You need to unlink your feeds and put a tiny bit more effort into using each service for what it is.More
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What really cracks me up is when people link their personal tumblr to their twitter account, like it’s really essential information that everyone needs to know it’s that time of the month for you, and it needs to be auto-fed from your tumblr to your twitter and your facebook.
Seriously, you’re not that interesting.
While on the surface I agree, this requires a basically agreed-upon idea of what twitter, tumblr and facebook are “for.” The only thing they are “for” is everyone. If you want rules, join services that have rules. You won’t have any followers, but at least everyone will act the same way as you, which is what you want, right?
I mean, I love to act all high and mighty on the internet.. I mean I LOVE it, but people are gonna do what people are gonna do. Unfortunately, more freedom means more fart noises. Some people are just talking to their friends and don’t give two craps what you want.
Deal with it, unfollow, filter.
