my own little corner of the internet

i've always missed having a little corner of the internet where i could just post whatever was on my mind, the same way i used to back in the 2000s. thoughts, art, music, games, screenshots, things i find beautiful, things i find interesting. basically the way people repost things they come across on twitter or tumblr.

so i ended up adding something like that to my blog. i created thoughtz, my own twitter-like space. i can write posts, repost things from anywhere on the web, quote posts by embedding them, and just share whatever catches my interest. and honestly, i love it.

it isn't twitter and nothing i post here is gonna be pushed out to millions of people by some algorithm. but that's okay. this is my blog. my home on the internet. the place that actually feels comfortable and familiar to me. one of the few places online that still feels truly mine.

there's something about personal sites that reminds me of the internet i grew up with. back when people had their own corners of the web. their own layouts, their own pages, their own personality. nothing felt standardized. nothing felt controlled. people were just being themselves and sharing the things they loved.

the modern internet doesn't feel like that anymore. everything lives inside a handful of giant platforms now. a lot of the personality that once made the web feel special has slowly disappeared. everything feels more controlled, more restricted, and less personal than it used to.

i've never liked that. i've never liked being controlled, and i've never liked being told what i should say, think, or care about.

which brings me to twitter.

for most of the past year, something has felt very wrong with my account.

my posts don't seem to reach people the way they used to. they no longer appear in the feeds of people who don't follow me, and i've had followers tell me they don't see my posts either. i've also had people ask why so many of my posts are hidden behind warnings now.

even when i make a new post, the views crawl for hours before reaching a thousand. the momentum just isn't there anymore. there was a time when getting hundreds or thousands of likes was fairly normal for me, and some posts reached 10k or even 20k likes.

now even my reposts barely get the likes they used to. my overall engagement has dropped dramatically over the past year and continues to trend downward.

if you don't follow me, my profile displays a sensitive content warning. some of my post embeds show up elsewhere as "age-restricted adult content," and some of my quote posts don't even appear in the quoted-by section of the original post. i don't always receive notifications from people who tag me or interact with my posts either. even images in my chats refuse to load.

there have been so many strange things happening over time that it barely feels like the account it used to be. honestly, it's hard to understand how a single account on twitter could end up this broken.

i think it's pretty obvious my account's been shadowbanned and heavily deboosted. there may be something else going on too.

one of the biggest things i've noticed is the steady decline in followers. back in september of last year, i had around 23.7k followers. now i'm somewhere around 20.8k.

i know i've been posting a lot more anime girls, game babes, and nudity over the past year, and that absolutely caused some people to unfollow. even some game industry people who used to follow me moved on because of it. that's completely understandable.

but what feels strange is that it never seems to stop. usually when somebody loses a large number of followers, things eventually stabilize. my account just seems to keep slowly drifting downward even during periods where i'm barely posting at all.

maybe there's a perfectly normal explanation for it. maybe all the unfollows are genuine. i don't know. i just know my account feels very different from the one i used to have.

if i end up at 20.5k followers a few months from now after already dropping from 23.7k, i think it's fair to wonder whether somebody at twitter is quietly removing followers from my account. not all at once, but slowly, so it just looks like normal follower loss.

honestly, i don't really care anymore. i didn't plan to stay on twitter forever anyway. i'm just grateful for the years i had before everything started slowing down.

i got to share my thoughts on halo, dead or alive, gaming, art, beauty, culture, and all kinds of things with tens of thousands of people over the years. some of my posts reached hundreds of thousands of views, and a few reached millions. people messaged me to tell me they appreciated the way i see the world, that something i wrote stayed with them, or that i'd made them think about something differently.

that's what i'm most grateful for.

that's why seeing my reach collapse has been frustrating. not because i care about numbers. because it means reaching fewer people. having fewer conversations. having fewer opportunities to make a positive impact.

i've never cared much about fame. all i've ever really wanted is to see the world become a better place. a happier place. a place where people are making friends, enjoying themselves, and connecting with one another. that's the reason i've always shared my thoughts online. even if the impact is small, it still means something.

but when your posts stop reaching people, it's harder to do that. that's why i mostly repost anime and game girls these days instead of making the kinda posts i used to.

i still see people attacking dead or alive. i still see people attacking beauty and female characters in general. i still see people trashing classic halo. i still see people spreading misinformation, lying, and saying things i strongly disagree with or outright hate.

there was a time when i could push back against that kinda stuff and actually make a difference. sometimes thousands of people would see a post. sometimes thousands would agree with me. now it feels like the people i used to call out have more influence than i do. those days are gone.

i've seen accounts that used to be thousands of followers behind me catch up, and some are now close to surpassing me, while my own account keeps going down. it feels unfair.

social media has become such a numbers game. you can be completely right about something, and somebody else can be completely wrong, but if they're getting ten times the likes, most people will naturally side with them anyway. that's just how people are.

i've pretty much lost the ability to push back the way i used to. not because i stopped caring. if anything, i probably care more than ever. seeing beautiful things constantly attacked, and watching the very things that made the culture i grew up with feel so special increasingly treated as something wrong, offensive, or worthless affects me more than most people would understand. i've always felt deeply connected to those things. i just don't have the reach i once did.

at the same time, i feel like social media has reached a point where very little actually changes anymore. it's mostly the same arguments, the same conversations, the same people seeing your posts, and the same people liking them.

so maybe it's okay to leave that behind.

i got to make the impact i wanted to make.

i had a lot of fun. i got to push back against a lot of nonsense, destroy people, change some minds, celebrate the games and characters i love, and occasionally troll people along the way. i made memories i'll probably laugh about years from now.

but honestly, social media matters a lot less to me these days. things are heavier in my life than they used to be. i'm going through one of the hardest periods of my life, and i don't have the same amount of time or energy that i once did.

so maybe this is the right time to stop worrying about platforms and visibility. maybe it's enough to simply have a place that's mine.

a place where i can post whatever i want, whenever i want. a place where i can share thoughts, art, music, nostalgia, games, screenshots, old memories, beautiful things, cool things, spicy things, or absolutely nothing at all.

and honestly, whether anyone reads it or not, that's okay. i'd still be doing it anyway.

just because i feel like it.

maybe that's what i've been looking for all along.

my own little corner of the internet.

just like i had back in the 2000s.