“Like and subscribe!”

“Help us get our next thousand (or million) followers!”

I was using Linux before it was popular. Back in the day where you had to write Modelines for your XF86Config file — and do it properly, or else you might ruin your monitor. Back when there wasn’t a word processor (thankfully; that forced me to learn LaTeX, which I used to write my papers in college).

I then ran Linux on an Alpha, a difficult proposition in an era when web browsers were either closed-source or too old to be useful; all sorts of workarounds, including emulating Digital UNIX.

Recently I wrote a deep dive into the DOS VGA text mode and how to achieve it on a modern UEFI Linux system.

Nobody can monetize things like this. I am one of maybe a dozen or two people globally that care about that sort of thing. That’s fine.

Today, I’m interested in things like asynchronous communication, NNCP, and Gopher. Heck, I’m posting these words on a blog. Social media displaced those, right?

Some of the things I write about here have maybe a few dozen people on the planet interested in them. That’s fine.

I have no idea how many people read my blog. I have no idea where people hear about my posts from. I guess I can check my Mastodon profile to see how many followers I have, but it’s not something I tend to do. I don’t know if the number is going up or down, or if it is all that much in Mastodon terms (probably not).

Thank goodness.

Since I don’t have to care about what’s popular, or spend hours editing video, or thousands of dollars on video equipment, I can just sit down and write about what interests me. If that also interests you, then great. If not, you can find what interests you — also fine.

I once had a colleague that was one of these “plugged into Silicon Valley” types. He would periodically tell me, with a mixture of excitement and awe, that one of my posts had made Hacker News.

This was always news to me, because I never paid a lot of attention over there. Occasionally that would bring in some excellent discussion, but more often than not, it was comments from people that hadn’t read or understood the article trying to appear smart by arguing with what it — or rather, what they imagined it said, I guess.

The thing I value isn’t subscriber count. It’s discussion. A little discussion in the comments or on Mastodon – that’s perfect, even if only 10 people read the article. I have the most fun in a community.

And I’ll go on writing about NNCP and Gopher and non-square DOS pixels, with audiences of dozens globally. I have no advertisers to keep happy, and I enjoy it, so why not?