hey everyone on the interweb, firstly, sorry for the broken english, it is not my first language. i’m writing this from calcutta, india. my chosen family and I have decided to start a decentralised blog using writefreely. The above link is for the same. we want to build awareness about privacy issues and being safe on the internet while being able to have a place where they can put up their thoughts, and if need be use it as their collection of works.
all that is nice to think about and i would say we jumped in without much thought given as well. Even though about 15 of our friends and acquaintances have joined up, not many is willing to put out their work as such. neither older work nor new. upon enquiring, some mentioned issues with formatting so we have done a markdown guide, which made some people post, but another issue arose which is at the end a new platform, and for most of us whose first language is not english, this is a daunting task. there is a perceived value of a blog being good and some of them want to present things nicely. which is understandable.
we have made that people can now start as many blogs as they want, keeping as many hidden as they can. we will deal with storage issues when it comes to it, as we plan to keep the blog local, focusing on bengali and english content.
now what we are struggling with and need guidance about is what we should do to increase awareness? we want to increase users obviously, but we also don’t want non queer non creative people. we also do not have any idea of monetisation. and we honestly do not want to use community content to monetise. we can host fundraising but idk what should be the value proposition. so i am asking you all for some guidance. i just want people in my city and country to be more aware and carve out their own place.
Thank you so much for taking your time in writing this response. and I agree with you. I also have lot more questions than answers and I also find them interlinked with each other. also thank you for liking the guide, i was hoping i made it simple enough so that it is easier to understand. and i’m honoured you want to use it as a go to reference.
before I answer your questions, I want to provide some context. I live in a country, where the politics of race is extremely complicated. I come from farmers in a remote coastal village. People from our villages generally don’t get to go out, and if they do, they never return. I always took that as a personal choice, but now that I am out I understand it’s not so simple. I don’t want to go back because going back now I won’t be able to change things for better for my village. I came to the conclusion that information is something that changes lives, and since I can’t change the system, I’ll try to make sure information is accessible. That is the reason I have started the publication with my chosen family who also feels the same way. We have started with English as it is easier to start with, but we plan to keep equal focus if not more in our language.
To answer your questions:
that is what i’m trying to figure out. I fee if everyone had similar access to information, things would be better. is it the right way? is it worth doing? i don’t honestly know. but i’ll never know if i didn’t try it, especially when i wholeheartedly believe in it.
also, maybe it’s my ego. i don’t want to be a nobody when I die. I want some idea by mine to be out there. I want to live through that. i feel if i can have a safe space where information flew freely and safely, no matter how small it is, it would be worth living a life and doing just that.
What is worth sharing?
Everything. new ideas, old tricks. shower thoughts, dumb questions. information grows, cultures take shape by sharing all thoughts. I do not think there should be a limit of what can be shared. I feel we shackle up our own self by limiting ourselves to what can be shared or not. but i don’t want to tell it to the members, i’ll only say what they can’t share. and then i trust their judgement on deciding what to share.
I feel existence is enough. I do not think humans are made equal. So i do not want to treat all humans as equal. Some humans need more care and some need less care. Some humans need more attention and some humans need to be left alone. I feel we as a society or as a community need to cater to the needs of the people as a whole. respecting the individuality of the person. but i think that’s where the individuality of a human ends, in their capacity. for someone running a marathon a day seems like a good day, for someone just doing house chores is a good day and that is enough. each human have different needs and that should always be taken into consideration. we are social animals, our collective action outweighs the individual. in a natural system like that we can be anything. we all have our roles in a society and everyone is important. as a collective, i believe we will always balance out. so it’s okay to just exist. i have trust in my fellow humans. where i slack off i know they will pick up.