I've been wondering again about the role of Hubzilla, and social media in general, in my life. Much of the time it is fairly boring for me to read through my network timeline. It seems that the most animated conversations concern Hubzilla itself. While it might be interesting to read occasionally about that, the scope of such discourse is a bit limited. Then there are lots of pictures of cats. I don't dislike cats, but I have zero interest in seeing pictures of them. It's interesting to keep abreast of free software and the fediverse, and the alternative social networks are about the only place one can learn about that. On the other hand, it would be possible to cover that ground with a few RSS streams.

Hubzilla provides me with a convenient link to place under my signature when sending emails, though, to date, I have never known anyone to actually follow such links. Yet I do like to have a more public place to record my thoughts or observations than in my longhand diary. I'm not sure why, but it's probably the same impulse that motivates so many writers, especially those who have no expectation of celebrity or material gain.

I think that ultimately, if we want Hubzilla and the fediverse to become a more interesting community, its denizens will need to be more open about their life impressions and experiences. Technical discussions are interesting only up to a point. Link sharing too is sort of an exercise in futility when it is so easy to access information. We should all be using feed readers more and social media less if we are truly passionate about matters that interest us.

There are issues with privacy. My personal way of dealing with that is to keep my real name out of the stream and to hamper search engines in their efforts to catalogue us. I don't mind if people make the effort to discover my identity - it's quite easy in my case - I simply prefer not to create direct connections to it.