ephem·​er·​al / ɪˈfɛm ər əl / Adjective · lasting a very short time · being of temporary value or passing interest

Like many fellow humans, I have a little memory box I call my “treasure chest”. (No, not the one with the old computer cables. The other one!) I use it to store precious keepsakes like photos, doodles or concert tickets.

For many years, my social media profiles served as a non-curated digital version of such a box. My Twitter timeline consisted of ten years worth of everyday rambles, art posts and rants. If you wanted to get to know me, you'd just have to visit my profile and scroll back a few weeks. Sounds easy enough, right?

Sure... except that that's not how people actually use social media.

Facing the facts

Be honest, how much time do you spend scrolling down your home feed compared to actively navigating to specific pages like user profiles or hashtags? I'm gonna go so far as to say: Unless we fall down a rabbit hole or are looking for something specific, passively consuming our home feed is more than enough for us. After all, a low-threshold, endless source of fleeting entertainment is exactly the right thing for winding down after a long work day.

We, as a species, are inherently afraid of insignificance. This most likely stems from primal needs for recognition in social groups to ensure survival, and contributes significantly to modern anxiety and depression. The thought of being mere, short-lived speckles of dust on a 4.5 billion year-old wet ball floating in the vast emptiness of space is so scary to us that countless artists, authors and movie directors have dedicated their lives to telling existential horror stories about it throughout the centuries. Their legacy? Their bestsellers, probably. But what is yours?

You are the main character. Your treasure chest full of keepsakes — physically or online — is a love letter to yourself, your life, your story. Your digital legacy.

But here's the thing: I, too, am the main character. And so is that guy over there. Everyone is the main character of their own story, and no one's treasure chest matters nearly as much to them as their own.

My point being: The only people who will actively scroll that far down your social media profile are you, malicious actors in search of age-old cringe posts to use against you, and AI scrapers looking for training material.

Is it really worth it?

My personal takeaways

If the constant onslaught of major historical events over the last half decade has taught me anything, it was to make peace with my insignificance in the grand scheme of things and use that for good. I've switched from putting myself “out there” on an eternal quest for validation from strangers, to focusing on my myself and my inner circle (y'know, the people who actually know — and genuinely cherish — that I exist, and for whom I can make a difference).

The absence of pressure to maintain an exhaustive documentation of my online life has filled me with serenity and clarity. A clarity that helps me distinguish between what's worth keeping and what really doesn't need to remain out there for generations to come who will surely spend hours scrolling down my profile to reminisce about me, the Main Character™, right? ... Right?

Just like its physical counterpart, the content of my digital treasure chest hardly matters to anybody but myself — and thus exactly fulfills its purpose. Why would I put it out on the street for strangers to rummage through?

A creative's perspective

This is not a plea to post less, mind you — many creatives depend on monetizing their crafts to survive, and building a sustainable network through regular engagement on social media can be a viable way to do that if you have the patience, resilience and marketing skills. But it is a plea to be mindful of what you leave out on the street unsupervised.

To finally draw the line back to the average social media user: The times where your followers would actually, regularly, actively hang out on your profile page are long gone. In fact that was over 20 years ago and called MySpace. In the age of fast scrolling and infinite loading, the vast majority of your followers will consume whatever happens to pop up on their home feed, scroll on and immediately forget it ever existed.

Sounds disheartening? It doesn't have to be! The entire point of social media is short-lived snapshots in time. Think of it as a very slow group chat. Make peace with your posts' ephemerality and use it for good. If you are a creative looking to get more eyes on your work, you absolutely have my blessing to delete old stuff and re-post it some other time. Nobody will notice that your post from two months ago is gone. I promise.

And just between us: There’s hardly a worse place for a permanent gallery than a microblogging platform like Mastodon, Bluesky or X. They're full of distractions, and if your profile happens to have a media tab, people need to dig through your selfies and reaction GIFs to get to the stuff they actually came here to see.

My recommendation: Maintain a static portfolio site somewhere separate for easy access, and utilize social media to keep people updated on new creations, promote your commissions, and actively build a relationship with your community (people are more inclined to buy from you if they care about you), because that's where the power of social media lies!

What's in it for you and your community

In the age of LLMs, AI and deepfakes, an active but lean social media profile is your best bet at a compromise between visibility and protecting your content. What doesn't exist can't end up in training databases during scraper attacks.

Your platform of choice was bought by a questionable third party and no longer feels like home? You no longer feel comfortable on your Mastodon server? Moving somewhere else is much easier if you're not weighed down by a massive post history only you care about. (By the way, did you know you can move your followers between Mastodon accounts? Here's a tutorial!)

Regularly deleting old posts also comes with an indirect benefit: If you're on a Fediverse server like Mastodon, there's a very good chance that it's a labour of love, run by someone who pays for hosting and server storage out of their own pocket, often supported by donations from other community members. Regularly freeing up space is a great and effortless way to support your server admin even if a donation is not an option, as you contribute to keeping hosting costs low and thus help ensure the server's continued existence. Win-win!

Mastodon makes it easy to automate old post deletion, and if you have some absolute bangers you don't have the heart to let go, worry not! Mastodon provides various customization options for you to make sure your most treasured posts remain intact.

Sounds good?

If you want to give it a try, here's how:

• On Mastodon's web interface, navigate to “Preferences” → “Automated post deletion” and tick “Automatically delete old posts”. (Don't worry, the settings aren't applied until you hit “Save changes”.)
• In the nearby dropdown menu you can choose an age threshold from one week up to two years. Feel free to start with a longer period and work your way up to a shorter one that works for you over time.
• In the “Exceptions” settings below, you can opt to keep pinned posts and direct messages, posts of your own that you favorited or bookmarked, polls and posts with media attachments (the latter obviously defeats the purpose if you're looking to protect your images from AI ingestion or to free up space). You can also make exceptions for posts with a minimum amount of boosts or favorites of your choice.
• Hit “Save changes”, lean back and enjoy the liberating feeling of losing dead weight.

So, who's up for some spring cleaning? 💪

💬 Comment on Mastodon

← Back   Home   Tip jar

My name probably won’t ring a bell to anyone in the roleplaying community, so before I start, here’s a few words about me and my history in roleplaying!

Skip intro ↓

The obligatory character backstory

You know that one Quiet Girl™ in class who builds sandcastles for bugs and wants to be a tiger when she grows up? That was me! (Still applicable, just taller now.) To absolutely no-one’s surprise, I went full-on nerd and spent my leisure time drawing, worldbuilding and gaming.

But can you believe that I had no idea what Dungeons & Dragons really was until my early twenties?

I joined my first group during university. It was a carefully-crafted homebrew D20 system set in Erathia (Might and Magic) and starring the usual suspects race- and class-wise, but also including some neat extras like Skaarj (Unreal) as a playable race.

I noobishly min-maxed the most badass orc fighter I could. Her name was Snot, short for Urty-Waa Snotmosha, and she wielded a massive two-handed spiked club called Bonebreaker.

Our game nights were legendary. We laughed, we argued, we had chicken nuggets at 3 AM. Snot didn’t make it, but she had an exciting life full of adventure. Our DM was relentless, and he had a way of creating atmospheres so immersive they even haunted me in my dreams. I had to move away at some point and life happened, but it was an amazing time. (Paul, if you’re out there: Thank you for everything!)

*record scratch*

Fast forward a decade and a half later: I’m still just a humble casual roleplayer, but somehow married to a full-blood DM whose circle of fellow DMs and otherwise professional nerd friends have kindly accepted me as one of their own. (Logbook Day 2,917: They still haven’t noticed I’m one of them darn furries. Pssst!)

For one of our first big vacations I dragged my man to Gen Con 2018, which happened to be my first roleplaying con ever and inevitably set high standards for any future cons – or so I thought.

Enter Cauldron

Back when our friend Settembrini first told us about his idea for the first Cauldron con, I remember being like: “We’re gonna cook for how many people? We’re gonna make them room with complete strangers? Some of them are gonna have to sleep on cots? Are we sure this is gonna work out?” – My Gen-Con-spoiled ass didn’t compute. But at least I had an excuse to cobble together a little website. Yeee!

Lo and behold, it did work out. Because if there's one person who can make it happen, it’s Settembrini.

People from all over Europe (and even overseas) came flocking to Schloss Hohenroda – a glorified mansion in a commune of 3,100 souls somewhere between a forbidden green field and a huge ominous gravel pile – to roll some dice, despite knowing that they're gonna have to sleep on cots and eat my cooking.

And holy tapdancin’ wizard on a stick, was that an experience!

I stumbled around taking photos, waited tables, chatted with participants, collected empty beer bottles from dubious places and supported the badass Eria (Settembrini’s wife and the true backbone of Cauldron – if not for her we’d all starve to death in the middle of nowhere) in the kitchen.

I – a mere casual player who can’t tell an owlbear screech from a goblin fart and just somehow ended up in the middle of this all due to funny life choices – made the acquaintance of James Raggi and Gabor Lux, and many other brilliant minds who actively contribute to the oldschool roleplaying community.

Although admittedly I was so busy that I didn’t make it to a single game, it was incredibly wholesome to exist in the same space as this cheerful crowd who seemed to be having a good time, to get to know them, and to simply enjoy the vibe.

And needless to say, the moment I read the first Cauldron 2023 reviews and after-action reports, what little was left of my initial worries had completely evaporated!

Oh shit here we go again

Where did the time go? As I am writing these lines, it is the first weekend after Cauldron 2024.

Participants are slowly starting to sober up and write blog articles, which I’m happily putting links to onto the Cauldron website.

I am once again blown away by the amazing feedback, the magnificent folks I met, the hilarious places I collected beer bottles from and the great conversations I had. And will you believe it, I played a few games, too!

Cowards of the Sea

The award-winning B/X Blackrazor, deemed “Best DM” by the players of Cauldron 2023, couldn’t join us this time – but he kindly provided a hand-tailored tournament module so that he could be with us in spirit (and laugh and laugh).

The module was called “Children of the Sea”. My slot was DM’d by Settembrini, and our mission was to recover an important stolen artifact from a pirates’ cove.

Spoiler alert! Click here if you wanna skip ↓

I picked a pre-generated character named Sookie who was a half-elf fighter, magic user and cleric, and who was proficient at fixing things but not necessarily people. What could possibly go wrong???

Scarred and battle-hardened from past AD&D experiences, we slowly crawled through the dungeon, an inch at a time, in search of the holy artifact and to get our sticky fingers on any valuables that were not nailed down.

(“Wait, you haven't even gone downstairs yet?” – My friend Schibbi during our break about 2.5 hours in.)

Kudos to Settembrini for putting up with our collective dungeon anxiety. Luckily, eventually we had noped out of everything so hard that we’d accidentally ended up just in the right place.

You know those famous last words that go “Okay, before we conquer the ship which must obviously hold the artifact, let’s check that strange little corridor over there real quick”?

Yeah.

Who knew that stepping into an unnaturally dark corridor would trigger a fight against a bunch of shadows? … Okay, we all did, probably, but an extra spooky place had to mean extra valuable treasure!

Well, had I known that shadows are classified as undead instead of demons in 1st-edition AD&D, I would’ve turned them and this fight would’ve been a piece of cake, but alas, yours truly the party cleric dropped the ball.

*Benny Hill theme starts playing* Hilarity ensued, otherworldly beings were poked with non-magical weapons, a friendly fireball was cast, and two party members croaked – when suddenly one of my fellow players dropped a hint at the shadows’ undeadness.

Clang! That was the sound of the penny dropping, and the last thing the remaining shadows heard before I successfully turned them. We could finally push on!

We were barely done licking our wounds, as suddenly a hulking creature stood before us, encrusted with barnacles and wearing a coral crown. It was the pirate king! … Uh, is it too late to go back?

For some reason the looming spirit of Blackrazor seemed to have mercy on us, as due to some lucky rolls and skilled sling shots courtesy of our halfling, the fight turned out a walk in the park as compared to the shadow encounter. The king fell, we recovered the artifact from the room behind him, revived a dead party member, stuffed our pockets with some treasure-to-go and fucked the hell off. What a ride!

The Ransacking of Willowby Hall

The next morning’s RPG session led me into a haunted manor. The adventure was called “The Waking of Willowby Hall”, created by Questing Beast and DM’d by the awesome _x_y_z_.

Our objective was simple: Ransack the abandoned manor, discover its secrets, and get out with as many shinies as we can carry. But little did we know what we were getting ourselves into!

_x_y_z_ had brought pre-gens rolled by his regular group, and some of them were hilariously shit. I picked the 10-HP fighter and went in, along with another fighter and a thief.

I’m gonna cut this short since some of y’all surely aren’t familiar with this adventure yet and may still wanna play it, so I’ll just say so much: Even though my character died on their way out, I enjoyed the game from start to finish!

It gave me a delightfully light-hearted point-and-click adventure type of vibe, and it seemed straightforward enough that I’d consider giving it a shot if I ever gain the confidence to DM something. (Need to find me some unblemished fools first.)

To be continued

Needless to say I had a blast at Cauldron 2024, both as con staff and as a participant. Naturally, I already volunteered for 2025, because apparently this is my life now (okay okay, and maybe because it’s genuinely fun).

See you in Hofraithe Rosenthal!

PS: I can’t believe I was one of like three women, again. Where are my amazons, witches and dungeon mistresses at? Come on, girls – I know you’re out there, and I can’t wait to meet you!

💬 Comment on Mastodon

← Back   Home   Tip jar

Contents

• Moving your followers
• Re-following your followed users

Moving your followers

On your new account

1. Go to Preferences → Account → Account settings
2. Find the section “Moving from a different account” near the bottom and click “create an account alias”
   
   
3. Enter the handle of your old account (e. g. username@example.com, note that it has to be without an @ in front of your username) in the input field and hit “Create alias”
   
   

On your old account

1. Go to Preferences → Account → Account settings
2. Find the section “Move to a different account” near the bottom and click “configure it here”
   
   
3. Enter the handle of your new account and your password in the input fields and hit “Move followers”
   
   

This might take a while – if you plan to delete your old account, make sure the transfer is complete first.

Note that the above procedure will only move your followers. Your new account will not automatically re-follow your previously followed users, but you can import them as explained below.

Re-following your followed users

On your old account

1. Go to Preferences → Import and export → Data export
2. Find the “Follows” row and click “CSV” to download a list of your followed accounts
   
   

On your new account

1. Go to Preferences → Import and export → Import
2. Select “Following list” in the dropdown menu and tick the “Merge” box
3. Select the previously downloaded CSV and hit “Upload”
   
   

This can also be done with lists, blocks, mutes and bookmarks.

Happy tooting! 🐘💨

← Back   Home   Tip jar

How it started

After everybody moved there from LiveJournal and deviantART, Twitter had been my online home of choice for more than ten years. All my long-time friends from the art community were there and we would use the platform to follow each other's art and life updates from all over the world. It was a great time – until we all turned into brands.

I don't remember exactly when social media marketing became a thing. But I do know that at the point our carefree teenage years were over, we all had to start making a living to pay our own bills – and in times of social media, there had never been a better opportunity to get seen and to make money doing what we loved.

So we suited up, professionalized, and turned Twitter into a marketplace. Over the past years, however, the online art community had fucktupled in size – resulting in many of our market cries drowning in the sheer mass of equally beautiful commission offers that were out there. So we expanded our social media presence to Instagram, Facebook and other corporate platforms with potential clients on them, resulting in many artists going into pure broadcasting mode (= posting content, but not actively interacting with the community) to save time and avoid burning out.

Simultaneously, the platforms had gone through a change: Users no longer had to actively put effort into finding cool stuff to look at, but the algorithms would bring it to them automatically, providing an endless stream of easy-to-digest entertainment. Content became much faster and easier to access, like, and scroll on to the next thing, rinse and repeat – no further effort or engagement required. An unarguably welcome development, given our jam-packed daily lives. So we no longer actively engaged in a community, we consumed.

Broadcasting and consuming vs. being a community

It's safe to say that the ever-present broadcasting-and-consuming mode is what killed the fun in corporate social media for me personally. (Right after my aversion towards billionaires, ads, tracking and corporate greed, but there's enough articles about that out there.) As someone who grew up in the golden era of forums and blogging platforms, where the Like function hadn't even been invented yet, and interacting with each other and exchanging information was the point of the whole thing, this recent development has become a huge turn-off for me, both as a creator and as a consumer.

It took me quite a while to realize: I want to be a person, not a brand or an audience. As a community member, I don't want to be marketed to and I don't want to market myself to others. I just want to have a good time!

Free time shouldn't feel like a side job

After more than a decade on Twitter, I thought it would be hard to let go, but at this point it felt like a faded relationship that had run its course, so it was more like a “k bye” moment than anything else. (I'm very privileged to have a secure job and not have to rely on monetizing my art, though, so I can't really blame anyone for holding onto Twitter and Meta for as long as they can in order to pay the bills.)

Only after I made the cut I realized how much of an impact corporate social media had actually had on my personal wellbeing. I wouldn't consider it an addiction thing for me personally; I couldn't have cared less for an algorithm providing random entertainment for hours on end. In fact, it was the slow-but-steady brain wash: My whole online life was eventually centered around staying relevant to Twitter's algorithm so my friends would be able to see my posts at all. Needless to say, this was exhausting. I already had a full-time job, I didn't need another!

An acquired taste

When I first came to Mastodon last year, I didn't feel like it was for me. Only less than a handful of my friends were there, and no matter how professionally I broadcasted my carefully crafted art posts: cricket sounds. I was absolutely bummed.

Just as I was about to pack my things and leave, I unexpectedly happened to end up in a genuine and wholesome conversation with the instance admin. This wasn't something that would happen on Twitter, and it was the moment I realized: There's people out there, not a soulless corporation or mindless consumers. And if you treat them like people, they'll treat you like people, too. What a concept!

Things massively improved from there. I started to actively engage in the community, commented on people's art instead of just liking, and pro-actively helped other fresh Mastodon users find their way around. Suddenly, it was just like in the old times, and within one year of genuine human interaction I acquired twice the amount of followers that I had after a decade of broadcasting on Twitter. (Human interaction is more important to me than follower count, mind you, but I felt like this deserved to be emphasized.)

How it's going

Spending my time away from corporate social media has been nothing short of a miracle cure for my mental wellbeing and a milestone in terms of character development, and I'm loving it! Not being constantly preoccupied with sacrificing my firstborn to appease The Algorithm™ or marketing myself to an Audience™, I've become much more laid-back, modest, patient and open-minded than I was around this time a year ago.

I made amazing new friends and like-minded acquaintances by nerding off about tech and music with strangers. I enjoy reading about everyone's special interests, and thanks to my ever-helpful fellow techies, I've learned a great deal about optimizing my private IT infrastructure, data security, open source software, accessibility and what to look out for in software and apps. Thanks to my homies nudging me into adding image descriptions for blind and partially-sighted users, I'm now eagerly learning more and more about accessibility in digital applications, which, in turn, is a useful skill I can apply in my job.

I could add so much more to the list, but I'll save that for another blog article. In conclusion, I feel like setting foot into the Fediverse has turned my life around in a good way, and I look forward to continue spending the next years in such great company!

💬 Comment on Mastodon

← Back   Home   Tip jar