I feel weirdly conflicted about Dabs leaving. I gathered those stats because I keep a lot about my own posting across various alts and wanted to compare. They had produced such a crazy amount of content, especially for how high quality it all was. And I guess I messaged them expecting to chat about ways to really get posting more focused and organized because that’s been a fascination of mine and instead I apparently made them have a moment of reckoning and log off.

It’s objectively a good thing that a comrade is taking time to reflect and take care of themselves. But to whatever extent I was the catalyst for them leaving, I feel like I’ve caused discomfort or done something wrong. And there’s a part of me that’s worried about the site making up for the loss in content, which makes me feel worse because that’s an awful priority to have. The site will be fine and there’s no way to avoid activity ebbing and flowing, nor is there anything wrong with not growing at a constantly increasing rate like capitalists want to.

I don’t normally discuss my emotional state on this account but I’m trying to be very transparent. I write a lot about how we relate to social media. It’s what this account is for. But I fundamentally am interested in this subject because I use social media in unhealthy ways. I’ve been a prolific enough poster to relate to Debs, though obviously not of the same quality. I was not in a good place while I was posting that much. And I think that subjective alienation can sometimes can lost in the analysis. I feel like encouraging healthier posting habits would have the opposite tradeoff that capitalist social media does: less content up front, but more ability to self-regulate and interact with the world around us.