All the wrong people

A couple of weeks ago, an old friend in Brussels I know from EU politics messaged me on Signal asking me how I was. “I can’t reply fully now” I told him, “I am in rural Romania on #CrossBorderRail.”

“Oh are you doing another tour?” he replied.

Well, yes, just 7 weeks and a massive crowd funding effort, my most complicated tour yet. And he had not seen it anywhere on any platform we are both still using.

And then this morning on LinkedIn, there is someone I have never heard of and do not know personally commenting on something I wrote, and worse still alleging I am drawing a conclusion that I did not even make. On LinkedIn it is ever thus, mansplaining on demand.

But the crux essentially is this: my digital communication is landing too often in front of the eyeballs of the wrong people.

I’d rather like it that my old friend in Brussels would roughly know what I am doing, and I would also rather like it that some know-it-all did not think it was fair game to dump his wisdom into my feed.

I can of course explain how a lot of this came to pass.

Facebook – when it used to work – was the network for that wider network of friends sort of thing, the place for births, deaths, marriages, significant life events. But then it enshittified, and once Zuckerberg cosied up to Trump I abandoned it – but even were I still there it is broken.

Twitter – when it used to work – was the public forum for the discussion about politics and transport, and since Musk killed that one, those sorts of public discussions have splintered.

I loathe LinkedIn and its I’m-cleverer-than-you passive aggressive positioning tone, but given half the railway industry is there cannot afford to ignore it completely, but what I am posting there is getting little in the way of response and most definitely is not generating a meaningful discussion or anything in terms of learning for anyone. And while Mastodon is great fun, and Ivory on Mac and iOS make the usability excellent, the community there is heavily German and remains small. Most of the former Brexit analysis crew have de-camped to Bluesky but the rest of the EU politics bubble has not, and I find the app experience – especially on a computer poor – and find myself only using it intermittently.

I have a rudimentary newsletter system on this blog and my rail commentary site – you can get notifications of new posts by signing up in the sidebar. But I am not into newsletters really – either as a consumer of them, nor as a producer of one on a regular schedule. And Substack is evil, so I am sure as hell not going there. And trying to make a weekly podcast or weekly video is beyond my technical ability and financial means.

But what do I do about this? How do I put this right? Can I put this right?

If you are reading this, do comment below and tell me how you found the post, and tell me what I ought to do differently, and what might work for you. The only constraints: no Meta tools (Insta, Facebook, WhatsApp), no X, no Substack. But beyond that I will consider all suggestions!