The Keenedom Reborn (sort of), or, Social Networking Musings

Nobody uses websites these days. Everyone’s using social media instead — Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, etc. I know this because industry statistics say so, and also because all day long people ask me questions on Facebook and Twitter that they could have found the answer to in 2 seconds by simply coming here. Public figures, be they actors, musicians, politicians, or low-rent hillbilly horror writers like myself have no choice but to use social media these days.

The problem with social media is that it changes every five years or so. I’m sure we all remember when MySpace was the BIG THING. Now it’s Facebook. But most industry watchers agree that Facebook will soon go the way of MySpace (a prediction I happen to agree with).

So, with that in mind, I’ve been testing out a few of the newer social media sites and apps, and reevaluating the ones I use. I still like Twitter the best. I will remain active on Twitter until I die or until it shuts down. I stay active on Facebook, but I view Facebook as a necessary evil, and I’d be happy to see them go the way of MySpace. I have a Tumblr for the reactivated Jobs In Hell, but I don’t think I’d use it for more than that, because I really don’t care for Tumblr’s platform and set-up. My YouTube page doesn’t get updated nearly as much as I’d like, but that will change later this year. LibraryThing is a ghost town these days. I’ve been experimenting a little with Google+, but so far, it doesn’t hold my interest, nor does it seem to allow me to communicate broadly (something that a public figure requires of any social media).

None of these match, for me, The Keenedom at it’s height (although Twitter comes close). For new readers, The Keenedom was my old message board forum (and for you kids, message boards were things that once existed alongside other things like Netscape and Geocities and dial-up internet). The Keenedom Message Board forum was incredibly awesome and active, but it collapsed under it’s own weight for two reasons:

1. It had several thousand daily users, and it took a lot of time and effort to effectively moderate that many people.

2. I later opened it up to other authors, and gave them sub-forums. At first, I only featured tried and true friends (Bryan Smith, J.F. Gonzalez, Wrath James White, etc.) or veterans whom I admired (John Skipp, Ronald Kelly, Gene O’Neill, etc.) But then, at the request of those same several thousand users, we began adding more and more authors and, quite frankly, some of those authors were real shits — two-faced fucks who treated our members, our moderators, and the other authors abhorrently. Not all of them, mind you. In fact, most of them were cool. But there’s that old adage about a few bad apples.

So, I eventually said fuck that and pulled the plug on the whole thing.

Problem is, I miss that interaction. I miss those in-depth, enjoyable conversations. I can answer questions on Twitter, and I do, but I’m limited to 140 characters. It’s hard to have that type of group conversation on Facebook, because roughly 25% of Facebook users have the reading comprehension skills and social graces of a sand flea. Google+, in my experience, doesn’t seem to inspire those long discussions. And while Tumblr does have the Q&A feature, as I said before, I find Tumblr’s platform extremely wonky and a pain in the ass to use.

So, while musing over all this, I read an article that said teenagers are fleeing Facebook for Instagram and Branch. Yesterday, I explored Branch a little bit, and found I liked it. I like it a lot. So I’ve started a group there — a place where we can have the same types of conversations we used to have at The Keenedom, but the weight and time-consumption involved with moderation, and without the antics of fairy fucking princesses and halfwit trolls.

I’d like to invite all of you to join in the conversation. The rules are simple:

1. Don’t be an asshole.

2. Take 5 minutes to view the conversations that already exist before starting a new one (that way we avoid duplicate threads).

If you can follow those two simple rules, then come join us. Let’s talk. Been a while since we really did that.

THE KEENEDOM VERSION 2.0