everyone’s so obsessed with gideon’s biceps and you know what? me too 🫣🤪

Unrelated to books, but I hope it’s okay I’m posting here.

I’ve noticed that many users on here aren’t using other social media. Not hard to guess why.

I’ve recently stopped using the one social media I used to frequent regularly: Tumblr. I was mostly there to engage with fandom output (not discourse), but it was quite helpful for providing coverage of very niche news that a lot of outlets weren’t reporting on (e.g., I got my Odyssey film news from there 🔗). Tumblr’s been acting up for me and deleting my account randomly so I decided to give myself a break from it.

Tumblr wasn’t the only place I got my news from, it wasn’t viable for that. I get it from youtube also. Only from independent outlets I can trust, mainly: Zeteo, Novara Media, The Majority Report (which is mostly entertainment for me). I know, they just happen to be left-wing lol. I haven’t really subscribed to any of them because I’m in college and my transactions are monitored.

Before I was on Pagebound, I used to get my news from Instagram, i.e. I was made aware of the gazan and the darfur genocide, and couple other issues. I won’t say it was completely wasteful, I learned a lot of important things. But it started taking a toll on me mentally and afflicting me with new, unknown insecurities + perpetual hopelessness, that I needed to get away.

I haven’t cared about cable since I started caring about politics (and I just found it boring before). I’m not from the US, and I’ll let you know that TV has been so thoroughly hijacked by the governing party in my country that it is impossible to get reliable news coverage that isn’t completely cherry-picked to further a very bigoted narrative. I won’t even mention newspapers, I cut them up and make collage out of them sometimes.

I’ve noticed that I’ve become aggressively particular about where I get any information from. I used to get perfume recs from reddit, but I’ve forgone social media so thoroughly (save for YT, I need something) these past few months that I’m forced to engage with real people about these stuff (I use Parfumo for ratings and compositions, if you’re curious).

So I’m curious where everybody gets their news from. Anywhere you think is reliable? How has the media landscape in your country affect how you get your news? Does it go further than just news for you? I’d be open to branching out myself.

[reposted due to messing up the hyperlink first time i posted]

hey everybody, i was glancing through past founder announcements recently and saw one that caused some worry in me, link here

i’ll copy here the specific section of the post that concerned me, so you don’t have to click through and read the full announcement if you don’t want to: “We will start a new program, community-voted Member of the Month (exact language TBD). Each month starting in the Fall, the entire PB community can nominate a user they believe embodies PB values. The user with the most nominations will be awarded a badge and the ability to create a Quest.”

i’d love to hear what other people here think about this feature. personally, i’m concerned that it could turn into a popularity contest/a value system based on who is the most active on PB and which usernames are recognized by the most people. i really hope that there will be something in place to prevent that sort of result, because a popularity contest doesn’t feel like the PB spirit i know. i just don’t believe that voting for a member-of-the-month will be the community-building exercise that it is intended to be.