POSSE | starbreaker.org
Author: Matthew Cambion
Description: an overview of the content syndication strategy for starbreaker.org 🤮

POSSE is an IndieWeb concept. The idea is that you should publish on your own website first, and then syndicate your work to other platforms. Sometimes this can be done automatically. More often, it is done manually.

My syndication strategy is to provide full-text and headlines-only web feeds in Atom format, styled with CSS for readability in browsers. You can bookmark them in your brower. You can subscribe to them yourself. If you run a non-commercial social platform or aggregator, you are welcome to pull my feeds on a reasonable interval, such as every 24 hours.

If you run a commercial platform, negotiate a commercial license with me. And if your developers can’t cope with XML, my consulting rate is $250/hour with a 40 hour minimum, I charge double for meetings that should have been emails, and triple for on-site work. Why? Because fuck you is why.

I do not currently run a newsletter or syndicate to other platforms, aside from sharing links on the 32bit Café Discourse forum. I have not wanted to, because I think that since I provide feeds I have done my part. Furthermore, the major platforms to which IndieWeb people have devoted so much effort to interoperate plainly do not want people sharing hyperlinks that lead out of their virtual panopticons. Most importantly, if you think I’m a dick here, you should see me the next time I create a throwaway account on Reddit and go on a shitposting bender.

Nonetheless, I am considering syndicating a monthly digest to Bear Blog, write.as, or Buttondown. I may return to the Fediverse, but if I do so it might be by syndicating to write.as instead of bothering with Mastodon and friends. Dreamwidth might also be a good fit, even though I had missed out on the original LiveJournal. It would give people who want to post comments a place to do so without cluttering my main site or depending on third-party services like FastComments or Disqus.

Under no circumstances will I join Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, YouTube, Threads, Medium, Instagram, or Substack. Twitter and Substack in particular are Nazi bars. Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are out because Mark Zuckerberg was a mendacious little creep when he almost got booted out of Harvard because of FaceMash, and he has not improved a bit in the intervening decades. Medium is aptly named; the self-help content and Silicon Valley self-congratulatory material are neither rare nor well-done. Reddit is 4chan with pseudonyms, and /u/spez (CEO Steve Huffman) is an asshole. YouTube and TikTok are right out; I have a face made for radio.

Speaking of radio: Madam Catastrophy will most likely have me assassinated if I start a podcast, and not merely because I have a voice made for print. There are plainly too many dudes with microphones who should be blogging instead; I at least can read faster than these clowns can talk.

skip all tangents

## on the possibility of being assassinated by Madam Catastrophy

My wife’s threat of violence should I join their ranks is not idle. She has seen Double Indemnity, and has consumed enough true crime to have a credible chance of making it look like she had nothing to do with it. She knows not to tell Johnny Law anything but, I would prefer not to answer questions without an attorney present. She knows that no DA will go to trial if they can persuade or intimidate a defendant into taking a plea bargain, and being as ornery as I am will demand the jury trial that is her right as an American.

She knows how to ensure the police won’t find a glove that fits. After all, if the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit. She also knows that once acquitted, she can keep everything instead of settling for half after a divorce. Assuming she’s even indicted, of course. I did not marry an airhead.

This is just as well for the rest of you: I am not cut out to be a content creator, except when I retreat to the bathroom with an E-meter, drop trou, and clear out some butt thetans. But by that standard, even babies can be content creators. 💩

And Scientology, Occasional Reader, is just space opera for Cathars. You knew it before; believe it now.

Incidentally, she won’t have me buried next to Jimmy Hoffa for the jokes above. She knows I’ve made far more egregious ones in the past, and may come up with worse ones still. I could always work in an excuse for one of the characters in my fiction to know about a technical death metal band called Scatological Ideation that uses scat singing for vocals. And their discography? One studio album—Wafflstömp!—and three double live albums:

- Public Defecation
- Defecazione al fresco
- Défécation en plein air

As you might have suspected, I am the reason M. John Harrison was very afraid of worldbuilding and its practitioners.

return to main text