Fresh Fusion

I’ve embarked on a huge restructuring and visual overhaul of my website, and as I thought about it more and more, I started asking the Big Questions such as:

Join me for a dive into my design notes as I think through these sorts of questions!

The last two weeks have been devastating for me—on multiple fronts, both as a huge fan of the #VanLife community as well as a figure in the Ruby programming community. This podcast episode is my catharsis, as I try to work through the heartache and find something meaningful to hold on to at the end of the day. As content creators, it’s only natural that a huge part of our identity is wrapped up in the work we do and the subjects we’re passionate about. But what do you do when that world starts to fall apart?

Content warning: this episode deals with very sensitive and troubling issues. Please, if you find yourself triggered at any point, feel free to switch off the show and take care of yourself.

If you’re in the US: call 800-273-8255 or text TALK to 741741. More information and resources available at the AFSP website.

Creator Class is my new newsletter all about the challenges and rewards of being an underpaid content creator building an audience one connection at a time. In today’s episode of Fresh Fusion, I talk about why I decided to rebrand and refocus my newsletter and why it’s so important to highlight conversations around motivation and ethics in content creation. (Also why I’m ditching YouTube and going back to an audio-only format!)

I opened the Patreon mobile app on my iPhone. I looked at the feed. Suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, POOF! A bunch of the creators I follow vanished. Gone. Out of this world. Did they suddenly shut down all their accounts? Was there a rapture and I wasn’t notified? No, it was none of those things. Patreon just had a temporary snafu billing my debit card, and because of that, I was unceremoniously placed in fan purgatory with little elucidation of my crimes. This wasn’t a temporary user experience glitch. This was a UX disaster. And yet, buried in their help center, Patreon states this is exactly how they handle such matters. Boo! Creators and fans deserve better.

This is me stumbling my way through an episode all about systemic racism in zoning laws and white supremacist policies harming disenfranchised minorities, and how I was raised to believe affluent suburban neighborhoods are the American Dream. While the global pandemic has been horrifying and so very hard to stomach, perhaps we can also see it as a much-needed opportunity to accept just how much work remains to be done to bring liberty and justice to all. We shouldn’t ever want to go “back to normal” if the new normal could be oh so much better.

Prefer Video? Watch on YouTube

Subtitle: Rumors of Portland’s Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

This is a deeply personal episode. I spent most of my life within a 60 miles radius of where I was born. That all changed when I relocated to the Portland, Oregon metro area. I came here on a fact-finding mission in 2017 and fell head-over-heels in love with the place. It’s no accident in the slightest that the most creative period in my entire life has transpired right here in Portland. I guess that’s why it’s a real sore spot for me when I see Portland dragged through the mud in the press—not to mention the whole concept of living in a dense urban environment. Are moving to the suburbs really the answer to the challenges of pandemic living? Does living in a “hip” city really have any influence on high-level creativity and artistic scope? Tune in to hear my story and my take.

Prefer Video? Watch on YouTube

Tumblr is a social media platform heralding from a different time…the era of “Web 2.0”, when oodles of visual customization features were a given and open functionality like RSS feeds were compulsory. Yahoo! and Verizon nearly drove Tumblr to an early grave, but with the acquisition by Automattic, there is hope yet. Can Tumblr survive—nay—thrive in 2021? Jared White investigates.

Prior discussions of Web 2.0 stalwarts Tumblr and Flickr:

The vital necessity of competence in leadership and governance, life imitating art imitating life, and a megadose of fascinating news regarding Twitter’s forays into decentralization and open moderation tools…all on the latest installment of Fresh Fusion.

In the wake of last week’s horrific events at the United States Capitol where domestic terrorists stormed into the building and nearly toppled a duly-elected Congress, one of the top questions on everyone’s minds is: what is the role of Big Tech in the face of such extremism and anti-democratic conspiracy theories? What should Twitter, or Facebook, or Amazon, or Google, etc., be doing about all this? Do we even want them making unilateral descisions at such fundamental levels which affect policy making and political discourse? And just where did this violent strain of conservative evangelicalism come from anyway?

All this and more right here on the Fresh Fusion podcast.

This is it! Tune in for all the juicy details of why I walked away from Mastodon and the “Fediverse” after a year of fanboyism, and what needs to change in open social networking protocols before I let go of Twitter and Discord. Also some Fresh Picks of the day!