Fresh Fusion

We made it folks. ONE HUNDRED EPISODES! 🎉 On this 100th installment of Fresh Fusion, it is my extreme pleasure to welcome writer, founder, and marketing expert Mariya Delano to the show for a lively conversation about the growth of the internet and social media, when things started to go terribly awry, the cultural shift that’s happening RIGHT NOW, and where she believes this is all headed. (Spoiler alert: there really is lots to be hopeful about!)

Note: we recorded this before Twitter’s sudden rebrand to “X”. That…will have to wait for another day! 😂

We’re here to herald the return of the aggregator-style link blog—at least for me. Listen while I break down the recent launch of That HTML Blog, the rise and fall and rise again of the blogosphere, and the occasional value of moving quickly and not overthinking new creative projects.

Also: Countdown to 100! Don’t miss the very next episode which will be rather special, celebrating the 100th episode of the show! 🎉

The episode wherein I opine on all the latest news on Threads by way of highlighting others of interest who are talking about Threads and have stood out to me during my time scrolling through my Mastodon feed. Am I excited about Threads? Do I dread the rise of Threads? Has the trajectory of the Fediverse changed forevermore? Well…yes! Let’s dive in.

Countdown to 100! 💯 We only have a few episodes left until the 100th episode of Fresh Fusion…and in addition, we’re also celebrating the 5th anniversary of the launch of the show! In this episode, I muse on what I might do if my efforts to accelerate a career in content creation come to naught because the Fediverse doesn’t go anywhere. Will I…gasp…embrace Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram once again? 🤡 The answer may surprise you! (Or…perhaps not.)

We are witnessing the total meltdown of the commercial internet. Enshittification (thanks Cory Doctorow!) of social media and other large Silicon Valley-style products & services, combined with the specter of “AI” (ChatGPT, etc.) infecting every company’s efforts, has led to a rather scary inflection point. It’s getting harder and harder to work with corporations and use internet services without feeling fundamentally ethically compromised.

On the positive side, there’s a real opportunity here to rebuild an internet actually based on the values we care about—values like sustainability over the long term, avoiding the “fast growth” hype cycle mentality at the cost of a healthy ecosystem, and putting people over tech-infused greed. We can vote with our time, money, and energy by rejecting outrageous claims which do damage to the community and by supporting and contributing to projects and protocols which further a humane, creative, and safe digital world.

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Wherein I share my thoughts having tried out Bluesky, the performative nature of (some) social media, the trail of questionable decision-making regarding this platform, good art isn’t always popular, cheerleader buses, and why when it comes to the Fediverse, I’m not going anywhere.

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Is the end game of the internet really that a bunch of algorithms slurped up a subset of popular human-created & curated content and then can regurgitate it out as if the AI is clever enough to think for itself? Meanwhile, folks in the fediverse are up in arms over the “rise” of Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky (even though Bluesky’s been around for years) as well as Mastodon’s mobile apps nudging people to onboard via the Mastodon.social instance. Should we be concerned about imminent centralization of decentralized social networking? Is Jack Dorsey a mastermind who simultaneously helped out his buddy Elon Musk while competing directly with Twitter? LOL nope. All this and more in today’s thrilling installment of Fresh Fusion.

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In this episode, I comment on recent links—articles, news, toots—I’ve posed on my blog and on Mastodon. From the iPad celebrating its 13th birthday to dreaming of a better metaverse, from ethnic stereotyping to A.I. B.S., there’s never a dull moment here on Fresh Fusion.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once won big at the Oscars, but it’s not the only ’verse-spanning creation making it big this year. ActivityPub is having a moment, and we’re here to chronicle the rise of numerous new instances, applications, and networks—including the very WEIRD and wacky news that Meta (of all companies!) is exploring an ActivityPub-powered decentralized social networking platform of its own!

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As Arnold would say, I’m back, baby! Yes, I am rebooting my first blog ever, and this new daily weblog all about tech and nerd culture news with a dash of fun 90s nostalgia on the side will feature archives reaching all the way back to 1996. Are you excited yet? You should be! This site best viewed with Netscape Navigator! (Just kidding.) …But that would be hilarious!