The Good, the Bad, the Ugly--and the New Shiny!

Social media. Is it bringing the world together, or tearing us apart? I can’t say, and this post definitely isn’t about trying to figure out the answer; you can decide for yourselves.

The reasons why some of you may be considering leaving Facebook or Twitter (or have already done so) would take the rest of this post to list, so I’ll spare you. Google+ is dead come the end of April. Tumblr is in the middle of a cringe-worthy identity crisis that may well kill it. Instagram was comparatively unscathed by 2018, but it’s always one bad redesign away from disaster.

The point is, social media platforms come and go (raise your hand if you had a MySpace page). They change their design and their rules and inevitably rise and fall. As omnipresent as Facebook feels today, it’s transient like all the rest.

So, what to do? I plan to continue being present and active on the most popular sites of the day, whatever those are, so don’t worry - I’m not going anywhere. But if you are, it shouldn’t mean we have to stop sharing our enthusiasm about space and tech and sci-fi with each other. This is why I’m creating a place where I will always be sharing my enthusiasm about those topics - a place I will always control, and where you are always welcome.

I give you SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLES: Breaking News & Random Musings On Space, Technology, Sci-Fi & The View From A Writer’s Window. At SMBH, I’ll be cross-posting all my Facebook posts, as well as notable posts of mine from Twitter, Instagram and other platforms. At SMBH, you can not just comment but join and follow the conversation, without worrying about Mark Zuckerberg mining your data for an army of ad bots or Twitter shadow-banning you. It’ll be fun!

If you’re an RSS feed person, you can add the blog to your reader of choice: https://www.gsjennsen.com/supermassive-black-holes?format=rss. If you’re an email person, subscribe to the blog here. Note: this is completely separate from my primary author newsletter, as I don’t want to be spamming people who only want to hear about book news. So subscribe to SMBH if you want to get email digests of new posts 2-3 times a week, and never miss a conversation.

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Did you quit a social media platform in 2018, or make a New Years resolution to do so in 2019? Or did you find a new platform in the crop of upstarts that you’re enjoying? Let me know!