(I may or may not be posting this instead of finishing my summer reading)
OK, OK, I've been meaning to write this for a while now, 50 days was just a convenient excuse to finally get it posted. Happy? Good. Let's begin now.
§1. On migrating from Reddit
When I first came to Hubski 50 days ago, like a lot of us here, I came from reddit. If memory serves, there was some controversy about mods abusing their power, and through a series of links, articles and comments, I found my way to Hubski. I've read a lot of posts and comments about how hard people's transitions were at first, but honestly I didn't find mine difficult at all. I went through the tutorial, read the primer, lurked for a couple hours, then decided I liked it here and made an account. So cheers to the team for making migration simple.
Perhaps the reason I felt like I fit in so quickly was because Hubski was what I had been looking for in reddit. For the past couple years I've had few friends, and those I have had lived pretty far away, so it was difficult to get together. As a result, I ended up seeking out a community online: I sought others who shared my intellectual curiosity and desire to participate in deep thought and discussions. And that's what I found here.
§2. On community
This seems as good a place as any to transition to my thoughts about the community here. Like I said, when I first came I felt like I fit in pretty quickly. I was welcomed by thenewgreen, my first follower, and others. Hubski is a very personable site, I think. Its architecture and relatively small size tend to support deeply personal interactions, and allow familiarity between users beyond simple name recognition. Hubski is the first place I've found in a while where I both feel accepted and like most of the people (that second part's been the kicker recently).
§2.5. On Community
OK, this is mostly for the sake of the community/Community gag, but seriously, how awesome is Community? Legitimately my favorite TV show of all time.
§3. On brevity
Now we're really getting somewhere. As some of you might've noticed, I've been spending a bit less time on Hubski than when I first started. This is largely due to a series of realizations I've had in the past few weeks culminating in my realizing that a large portion of the time I spend online (and, as a result, a large portion of all the time I spend) is simply lost, i.e. I tend not to remember what I spent that time doing, and as far as I can tell, it doesn't impact my thinking in any meaningful way.
So I started thinking more about how I spend my time, and eventually determined that the most likely reason I wasn't recalling any of the articles or videos I was consuming was because I wasn't really investing in them. Since I didn't spend much time in my consumption, I think I subconsciously placed less value on the things I was consuming. As a result, I decided to spend more time with things that I would really remember and be able to discuss. So for the past week or so I've been trying to read more books and watch more documentaries (and TV shows).
§4. On original content
The real substance of this section is mostly that since I joined Hubski, I found myself posting more and more original content and fewer links, and I've noticed somewhat less engagement with this content as time goes by. I have my own thoughts about why that is, but I also want to know what you guys think - does anyone else feel like the community is struggling with practicing what it preaches as far as OC and its value?
That's about all I've got to say for now. I look forward to reading all your responses, and really, thank you all for being a part of this community.