Publishing on the ATmosphere

Summary

I have no more patience for platforms. I'm done.Products come and go. This is a truism of the internet. Do not expect any particular service to exist forever, or you will be burned. It can be a depressing thought. So much of our lives are lived online. Communities and culture are created online. The play is performed on stages we call "social media". But then they go away.We make our homes on these platforms. Set up shop. Scale a business. Connect with our friends. Build a following. Then something changes. A change in corporate strategy. An IPO. A private equity takeover. A merger with AOL. And it's never the same after that. All that work, all that culture, now painted in a different light. Sometimes locked away entirely.It doesn't have to be this wayWe can keep doing this cycle again and again. Invest our time and our lives into a platform. Thrive on it. Watch it die and simply move on to the next thing. It sucks though! Why should I have to leave Twitter if I spent a whole decade cultivating my presence there? Just because some Nazi asshole accidentally bought the thing? Communication tools are like art. When you put art out into the world, the relationship people form with the work is not yours. It belongs to them. The piece takes on a life of its own. The communities people create with a communication tool are theirs. Platforms are rarely good stewards of people's lives, their relationships. And so we feel loss every time the cycle repeats.Every time we pour our words into someone else's platform, we are creating social debt. Similar to technical debt, this does not incur a cost in the now. The pain is realized later, when the reality that you don't control this space becomes real.I write to you now on a new kind of place on the internet. This place is mine. Or rather, what I create here is mine. This product (a rather fine one by @btrs.co if I say so myself), belongs to @offprint.app . They might go away. Someday they will. But this, my words, my creation. Th...