A Sip of Tea: A Test of the Emergency ATProto System

Platforms are not your friends.

This is a thing that we instinctively know about the internet, and it becomes truer with every cycle. No tool, space, or framework is perfect. Even when some platforms offer to be the best that they can be, others are silently imploding.

Discord is currently walking back almost becoming one of the biggest privacy and security threats in the communication space despite its logic attempting to secure privacy and security. People are more quickly coming to terms with how much data is being moved about from the apps and sites that we take for granted. Windows is falling apart (or, depending on who you ask, operating as intended) to the point where otherwise non-tech-savvy people are rapidly considering switching to Linux to have a modicum of control. And all of this is to say nothing of the slow and haunting wave of 'artificial intelligence' creeping into every corner of our digital lives, threatening to divorce us from our own thoughts, our labour, and our connection to reality.

Stuff's kinda unreal at this point, truly.

I like using Ghost. My current newsletter is not bad — I like the way it looks (for the most part, but I am a flighty person sometimes); it operates exactly within the parameters that I have patience for in terms of having to think about and put out my content; and having a newsletter that can also operate as my author landing page, as awkward as it presently appears, is decent for business, although I would like something that looks more sophisticated when I have the Action Points to actually do that work myself.

Ghost, as far as I am aware, has done very little, if anything, wrong. It definitely ain't no Substack, I'll tell you that.

And yet... as time passes, and I desire to have greater control over the way I present myself online, I am more and more intrigued by having a system that is much more removed from a kind of branded possession. I don't want to have to pay for the privilege of putting my words out in the world. I don't want to have to scramble to find the ways to connect the things I say in one space to the social media platforms where most of my followers — and friends — are actually located. I would love to have a singular creative and professional ecosystem where I need to think less, nitpick less, definitely doomscroll less, and write more.

There are things about ATProto that I think I enjoy. I like Bluesky as a tool (although even it is definitely far from perfect in terms of how it is managed), and I think I am in love with the core ideology of creating a space where I have more ownership over my content, more transparency about how it is presented, and less fear about what happens to it when any singular platform disappears. I know very little about how it works, to be honest — Clarke's Third Law comes for us all when you don't have any intermediate-to-advanced information technology knowledge — but what I have seen about its interactivity and its transparency gives me hope not only that I can understand, but that it is operating at least close to its ethos.

And that makes me want to move the workshop closer to home.

This is no promise that the Afternoon Tea is going to permanently come from this space, but it is a test to see whether it would appeal to more potential subscribers and more readily be accessible to people who just want to read the garbage that falls out of my head sometimes. I am similarly enthused by the idea that it is remarkably easier for me to have a secondary publication here than it is on Ghost without having to pay more money, which has given me the idea that it would be fun to have a separate craft outlet where I talk about poetry and SFF, give prompts, and discuss media from the craft and theme angle instead of the culture and fandom one.

Platforms are not my friends. But I am too friendly.

Another reason I'm not picky about platforms is because, based solely on my location and the accessibility of many financial platforms, I cannot monetize most versions of my newsletter. Picking one that can't be easily monetized at all, then, is much more preferable than the alternative.

With that in mind, your support via other means — especially through a one-time donation via Ko-Fi — goes a long way to keep this content, and the other writing and game design work I do, alive. Thank you!

Support This Newsletter Via Ko-Fi

A reminder that this newsletter, as well as the rest of my writing and game design work, thrives with your support. My Patreon is where you can find snippets of new TTRPG projects, exclusive writing drafts, and more:

Subscribe to Brandon's Patreon

The Leaves

You got a lot of tea this week! That's all for today.

A reminder that you can help keep this newsletter and the rest of my work afloat by supporting me on Patreon, buying me a coffee on Ko-fi or sending a donation via PayPal, or by buying one of my small game projects over on Itch!

I particularly emphasise my Patreon, where I'm currently workshopping a vital piece of longform writing about AI and how creators can forge a solid rhetoric for our own creation and the work of our own minds. The last piece of it should go live over there in a couple of weeks!

My only question for you today is: what do you think of this platform so far, simply as a reader? Does this hold your interest more than the Ghost version of this newsletter did? Would you remain — or become — a regular reader if you knew it was part of the ATProto ecosystem? Feel free to answer either in a comment or by directly replying to the Bluesky post you saw this shared in!