Author: Bob

Moving a FB Group

As I’ve written about extensively here, I’m moving all my creative output and a lot of my communications off of social media platforms.

Here are some issues that have come up with moving one of the two Facebooks skateboarding groups I am involved with off Facebook…

Over the last few weeks we’ve been moving Neverwas Skateboarding off of Facebook and onto its own blog with links to associated accounts and services. For example, we are no longer going to host our yearly videos on YouTube. We have a PeerTube set up. This is the direction we’re moving.

The biggest reason for this change is the acceleration of changes for the worse on the various Meta platforms. My own personal feed is now full of actual propaganda clickbait. I mean FULL of it. I understand the need to generate adverting revenue, and I can accept seeing ads on the page. What I can’t tolerate are images, posts, and reels about Elon Musk, Zuckerberg and his new buddy Dana White of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and other people I detest. Reels about “how to get women”, “why the bible is wrong (inserting some super wacky shit)” are common. But the overall tone of what I am shown has changed dramatically to the “let’s get him mad so he’ll click this” manipulation.

But beyond that fact this all this bothers me, it is pernicious and harmful to society.

So yeah, it has been bad for a long time. It’s worse now.

As a group, the admins of Neverwas decided we could  not ethically keep the group on the platform. Yes, some of us as individuals have not completely extricated ourselves from Meta. But we can move the group.

Beyond our newfound contempt for Meta and the big social media silos in general (I shouldn’t speak for everyone, so let’s call it MY contempt), the main admin and I know there is a better way forward. A way that is more true to the way skateboarders used to do things. Flexible, non-corporate, grassroots, decentralized systems. No, we can’t have our own actual internet infrastructure that transmits data, but we can run our own installations of Mastodon, PeerTube, etc. We can host the blog on an ethically run small company’s system. If that company goes belly-up or sells out, we can easily transfer our pages to a new host.

This is all part of the IndieWeb philosophy – which harkens back to the early web, the pre-social media web. The web on which I ran Bob’s Trick Tips years ago. It’s just a better way to do things.

In moving the group to the blog, we spelled out very clearly our stances on a few things like homophobia and transphobia (and hate), MAGA extremism, and pervaders of conspiracy theories. Those ideas are not welcome in the group. We’ll not platform someone just in order to appear tolerant. Private groups do not owe anyone a venue to espouse their beliefs. It was felt best that the group, moving forward, be clear about the overall inclinations of the members. We all have different religious beliefs, various political persuasions, etc., but we all draw the line on these topics.

This has upset a few people in the group, who have left. They felt targeted. I’m not happy about that. The various ethical stances we have taken on the blog’s “Ethos” page are a direct reflection of the reasons we are leaving Facebook and Meta, not a targeting of individuals.

As I write this, today on January 20, 2025, there is a good chance an executive order will be signed by the new President that dehumanizes trans people in the eyes of the federal government. Make no mistake. Under the guise of some sort of  logic, such things are intended to dehumanize one group and please those who don’t want them to exist. So yes – we have stated our position as the admins of the group. If you disagree with that position(s), you may not be a good fit for this group.

All that being said, we don’t even have a “space” dedicated to the discussion of politics and social issues. And we never will.

Personally, there are a few people who may not wish to stay associated with Neverwas because they don’t like the way we are doing things, but who I still like quite a lot. People with good hearts who view the internet as a place for not just discussion but debate. To them I say — I still love you – but NW is not going to be a place for debate. There is nothing unethical about a group stating its ethics, be it a skateboarding group, club, or religious organization.

All-Around Skateboarding

I’ve been having a conversation with some of the guys on NeverWas Skateboarding about freestyle skateboarding and how back in the mid-late 70s and even early 80s skaters were more prone to being all-around skaters. By all around, I don’t mean “I skate transition AND street”.  I mean skater who did vert, banks freestyle, slalom, downhill, as well as just skating in the street.

You’d have guys like Doug “Pineapple” Saladino show up at a pro pool event and place in it, then the next weekend he’d win the Oceanside pro freestyle contest. My friend Paul was on the local Wizard Skatepark team. I used to see them practicing. They all practiced everything. The legendary Jeff Phillips was on the team, and I remember vividly being at the park on a Friday night and the team was all in the freestyle area doing their routines one after the other, and I saw Jeff doing his.

In 1978-79 Skateboarder Magazine published a series of “Quivers” articles, showing the board setups of a number of current pros like Stacy Peralta, Gregg Ayres, Mike Weed, etc. They all had a range of boards for different purposes, including freestyle.

That’s how it was. I suppose as each form of skating became more difficult and more advanced specialization came more to the forefront.

The all-around era was really the formative era for me. As I could only go to the skatepark for 2 hours a week, freestyle and bank skating (at local spots near my house) were most accessible for me. It was easy to practice freestyle at the nearby school parking lot. The banked driveways in our alleys were my bank skating training ground. Occasionally one of us neighborhood skaters would build some shitty little ramp. But all-around skating was always my goal.

Banning the TikToks…

This article from starbreaker.org came across my radar today. It expresses what I think about the TikTok ban pretty completely. Now it looks like Trumpistan may try turn it into some form of state media. How fitting.

I’ve never used TikTok. As soon as someone showed it to me and I saw videos of teenagers dancing I formed a negative opinion of it, because I can be a dick that way.

The  ability to create your own website is what democratizes the internet. The ability to run your own email list, using your own software democratizes it, just like owning your own data and creative output that you can move around and shield from AI thieves (as best you can) democratizes the web.

What would REALLY democratize it would be the ability to fully and completely OWN your own domain name, rather than renting it. But that’s how it works.

I’ve read opinions that having your own site should be easier. I don’t really believe this. It is already just so easy. It’s easier than it’s ever been. What is missing is the awareness in the general population that it’s possible. Awareness and desire. Not everyone wants to have a website. They just want to share stuff. The Fediverse answers that need quite well, but it requires a tiny amount of effort to understand. Tiny. Frankly the ability to text a group of friends and include an image or short video pretty much covers the sharing part as well.

But there is nothing like having your own domain name and website. Or even just a page. Hosted on space that YOU rent or own. Nice and portable. Make yours site such that if one host closes are begins to suck you can just move it. Easy.

Problem solved. You’re welcome, America.

The Beauty of the Hyperlink

As I delve further into the movement back to personal webpages and blogs as the basis for the real internet, one thing that has become very clear is that you must use hyperlinks whenever you can!

The beauty of the web, and really its original intention, was the linking of one document to others, creating – GASP – a web of information and links!

It honestly feels absurd to be explaining this, even if hardly anyone is reading. This is such basic knowledge, but I’m sure that if you ask almost anyone who wasn’t in tech back at the beginning, a serious computer hobbyist, or a librarian, they won’t know why it’s called the World Wide Web.

Social media at best barely permits good linking habits, and at worst makes it impossible, since the owners of the silos don’t want you to leave. To them it is critically important that you stay on their site. This fact has gone a long way toward ruining the internet, but not quite! The old internet is still there, the old ways are easier than ever to learn and do.

Anyway, on this blog, when not simply composing some irrational screed, I try to hyperlink to relevant pages. I tend to link to Wikipedia a lot. When I heard that Musk apparently said bad things or some other shit about Wikipedia the other day I donated for the first time. Hey, I’m a reference librarian approaching my 30th year in the profession so I understand the limitations and problems of Wikipedia, but it’s pretty useful if you are just needing info on the first Godzilla movie you ever saw or something.

Here’s the thing. It isn’t a web if there are no connections. Linking to other interesting sites, pages, or whatever is what makes the World Wide Web a web. So LINK!!!!!!

Manifesto?

OK, I know it seems like I’m going off the deep end, and I may be, but I updated my “About” page. It’s not quite a manifesto – YET. I’m working on it.

I added my static skate clips site, which I generate with Jekyll, to the navigation menu up top. I don’t now if I’ll stick with Jekyll, but so far it is working. There are a few issues I want to work out, but I do love the art gallery look of it.

Honestly, if I can get the issues worked out with Jekyll, or find another static site generator that solves those few problems, I may work on moving this entire blog to a similar setup. WordPress has been good for many years, but it is becoming bloated. I feel like the complexity of the mySQL/PHP stuff makes it vulnerable to hacking. I mean, I know this is the case. Worst, the themes in WordPress are becoming very hard to customize, absurdly complex, and almost all of them suck. The complexity issue means it is really not a great use of my time to create my own.

I do love using micro.blog for my other skateboarding blog. It is based on Hugo, another static site generator. Micro.blog is really a pretty amazing blogging platform. Still, I’m increasingly drawn to building everything I need myself. The transition will take time though. I have lots of other things I’m working on. I think ActivityPub is very cool, but really, I’m getting to the point I’d rather just have people follow the site by RSS and email me if they have something to say. I’m feeling less need to share it everywhere.

I’d hand-code everything and use SSIs IF I could easily create an RSS feed for it. I’m just not there.