Starting Up

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 03:12:00 -0400

This is what I wrote elsewhere:

“I’m starting a blog about the Night. I’ll go into more detail about that, over the months to come, as the blog defines itself.

The main blog, itself, is at Wordpress, which (unlike - name of site deleted -) has no groups. I’ve joined a few groups here, with subject matter related to that of my main blog. I’ll post content there, talk about it here, and sort of weave my main blog and this one together, so my place at Wordpress won’t be so isolated.

This will all make sense, eventually.”

Maybe, or maybe not. Life took over, real life outside of the Internet, a few years passed, and before I could get more deeply involved with a social network which need not be named, I found that I really didn’t want to be. The network was allowing its volunteer moderators to run wild, and much to my less than considerable delight, I found that it has happy to be a home to a number of neonazi groups, which explained some very strange moments I had, while talking with Support. It was time to move - but move to where?

Really, I’m not open to getting more deeply involved in blogging on a music centered social network, because the history of those is terrible. Let’s consider some of the one time competitors of the happy nazi home front (as I shall be calling that provider, henceforth, having no desire to give it free publicity, even bad publicity). Again, without naming names:

1. A friendly little place that I enjoyed blogging at until one day, oops! While I was away on summer vacation, it went from being a free service to be a pay one, and without sending me any notice, deleted my blog. Poof! Gone. Did the staff send anybody else any notice? I don’t know, but I get the impression that they didn’t.

2. A company that one day sprung the surprise that the videos and photos it was hosting (along with the music uploaded to its servers) were going to be deleted, and no, it wasn’t going to let its users download their own content before it was deleted, because they thought that there would be copyright issues involved. There was advance notice of the time of deletion, the notice just didn’t do anybody any good.

It went on to be bought out my a much larger company which, without warning, turned every single page on the network it had acquired into a redirect pointing to its own music site, doing so absolutely without warning, wiping out every single blog and group in the network.

3. Yet another company which received a few million dollars from its investors, and was unable to account for any of those funds a few months later. The investors were curious about that, and weren’t willing to invest any more money in the company. While some spoke of the staff squandering the funds on “hookers and blow”, a less lurid explanation could easily be found. Hollywood celebrities were using that free service which was run by the former head of a TV network, raising the question of why people who were worth millions would be putting up with the hassles of a free service. The explanation seemed obvious. They probably were being paid, which would explain where the money went.

While the celebrities seemed like nice people, they were terrible writers. I guess the company head thought that their names were big enough, that nobody would care about how dull and pointless their stories were. If so, he was wrong. The more loyal users, who took the company up on its request to blog more so that new investors would stay interested watched their content vanish suddenly, one day, never to return. The network’s former url is now occupied by homepage of a limousine service.

That last place had a happy, happy surprise for me, as well, a small one. I had saved both code only and full versions of my own blog, and found that the moment that the network vanished, my personal cache of my blog was scrambled. They had set their system so that what seemed to have been saved really wasn’t, because it was calling on content hosted remotely. Thanks, guys.

This is why I’m not willing to blog in such locations, any more. Experience tells me that the people who run such networks are almost always flaky, evil or both. No, a better choice is to find a good, stable blogging host like Tumblr, do one’s writing there, and just use the music networks to listen to music. If I ever make my own music (and I have no immediate plans to do so), I’ll make a video, upload it to a real video hosting service and embed it here - or maybe upload it here, if it is short enough. The most I might post to such a network is something like “this is what I just listened to”, and even that content is going to be duplicated here.

What kind of music? Expect a combination of Latin and Jazz, most often, probably, maybe, something smooth and relatively melodic which would feel right at an ungodly hour, like the one I’m up at as I’m writing this. Expect it, but don’t count on it, because all plans are subject to revision.

Myopic Midnight Special / Music Journal

Starting Up