Twitter killed Tweetdeck. Also, I'm on Pillowfort now.

Logo for the site Pillowfort- it's fancy text that says "Pillowfort." Image source.

So, I'm still on twitter (@pnumber628), but I keep asking myself, why am I still on twitter? It's just Elon Musk starting drama now, one bizarre policy change after another (charging money for blue checks, not allowing people to view tweets if they're not logged in, changing the name to X, claiming he will remove the "block" feature, etc). I keep telling myself, I will probably quit using twitter soon, and that will be an improvement in my life.

Well. On August 17, I published a new post, and went over to Tweetdeck to schedule several tweets to promote it throughout the night (which is daytime in the US where most of my readers are), and... I can't access Tweetdeck. Instead I get a message that says I should pay for some upgraded version of twitter. What? So, a bit of googling finds this: Twitter finally figured out how to kill TweetDeck, by putting it behind a paywall.

And, all right, well that gave me the push I needed to get serious about quitting twitter. Like one of the main things I was using it for was promoting my blog... I would schedule around 4 tweets, every single day, with links to my new blog post from that day, or an old post from the archives. Now I can't, so like, what's even the point of using twitter?

Now you may say "well you can at least tweet a link manually every time you publish a new post, even if you can't schedule several of them to post throughout the day" but I don't even feel like doing that any more. So I haven't been tweeting about my new blog posts at all.

So then I made an account on Pillowfort. What is Pillowfort? It's a social media site that I've seen some ace bloggers talking about. It seems to be smaller than other social media sites, and people like it because it's generally a positive environment and not full of people arguing with each other. A lot of ace people there, a lot of queer people, a lot of artists sharing their art, a lot of people interested in various fandoms- that's my overall impression of what people are using Pillowfort for.

"Oh," you may say, "so Pillowfort allows you to schedule your posts, that's why you're using it as an alternative to twitter." Well no it doesn't. But I don't feel that I need to schedule several posts to promote each blog post I make, because on Pillowfort you're not constantly bombarded with new stuff- like, I don't feel like my posts will get lost in the noise. So I just put 1 post on Pillowfort for each new blog post I publish here.

It's not really an alternative to twitter- it doesn't do all the exact same things twitter does. But that's fine for me. I don't need it to do all the exact same things twitter does. I just want to be on a social media site that feels like it's actually worth using, not a site that makes me feel like "I'm gonna quit this soon, and that will make my life better."

If you're on Pillowfort, go ahead and follow me! Here's my page: https://www.pillowfort.social/perfectnumber628 . And for some posts about how to use Pillowfort, see this list of links (uh currently I don't have permission to view this link? maybe the user will change their privacy settings so we can see it? it was a really useful post with a bunch of links about using pillowfort), the Pillowfort101 community (where new users can ask questions), and Advice for new users. It's kind of different from what most people expect from social media sites- it doesn't have an "algorithm" (I mean, it does, "sort by timestamp" is an algorithm), it just shows you a feed of the users and communities you chose to follow, rather than bombarding you with whatever it guesses you will be interested in. So when you first get started, there's not really anything to see on your home feed. My advice is, go and follow a bunch of people and a bunch of communities, indiscriminately, and then later you can unfollow them if you don't like them. Whenever you see anything or anyone you feel like you might like, follow them. You can always unfollow later.

But the reason I'm still on twitter is... back in the day, I had a really really good community of ex-evangelical Christians/ ex-evangelical atheists/ feminist Christians/ progressive Christians/ queer Christians on twitter. I used to say "twitter is my church." This was way long ago, like 2014 maybe? Twitter started going downhill for me in 2016, when it became a lot of doomscrolling, lots of posts about all the bad things that are happening and why they're going to get worse. And there was more of that when the pandemic came in 2020. And just over time, it seems like a lot of the people I used to follow have drifted away. A lot of the bloggers I followed back then aren't blogging any more. I still see a few tweets every day that are worth reading- like jokes about growing up evangelical, or proclaiming that Christianity is about setting the captives free rather than whatever Republicans are claiming that Christianity is about... and that's why I still use twitter... but it's not like it was before, and I feel like maybe it's not worth it for me.

So, my real question is, where my queer Christians at?

Like where are the online spaces where people are talking about what Christianity can be when it's actually about doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly before God, rather than about following all the rules that some old straight white guys made up? Where everyone knows that the image of God is trans, because God contains all the genders, just like Genesis 1 says: They made the day and night and everything in between, They made the land and sea and everything in between, They made male and female and everything in between. I want to talk about Black Lives Matter and how Jesus was a victim of lynching, and Christ is crucified again every time an innocent black person is killed in the street by police. And what actual repentance for the sin of racism would look like- real repentance, rather than just pretending it doesn't matter any more. I want to be in a Christian environment where it's taken for granted that women have full equality with men- I don't want to waste my time on people who think "women can't be pastors" is a valid opinion to hold. I want to read the bible in new ways, feminist ways, trauma-informed ways, queer ways. To see the bible not as something that has 1 correct meaning that we have to work very hard to figure out, but as something that can be meaningful to different people in so many different ways, and that's beautiful.

And so on- I could go on forever about the Christianity I believe in.

Years and years ago, when I first started blogging, I did have an online Christian community like that. But now not really. There are still a bunch of very good blogs that I follow, but I don't feel like there's a space where we can all talk about our ongoing process of figuring these things out. Some blogs are so huge, I don't even try to wade into the comments section because my comments will get lost in there among all the others. Twitter used to be that space for me, but it's gone wayyyy downhill and now I don't have a space like that.

So, still looking for my queer Christian church.

But anyway, the point is, I'm on Pillowfort now! I'm really happy with it so far. Like I said, I like having a social media site that feels like it's actually worth using, not like "I'm going to quit this soon and that will make my life better." If you're on Pillowfort, go ahead and follow me!