I see many problems with it echoing those of mainstream mass media. Especially with the advent of billionaire-owned social media and the increasing viability of automated posting, we see the same inequality present itself - the richest can pay for bigger microphones and astroturf the place. Even just places like Lemmy and connected tools show what a world of difference it makes to be a little further away from the mass bot armies and the profit motive.

I do believe there are some types of social media which can be constructive, but these are not like the general-audience mass social media we see (facebook/insta/tiktok/youtube/reddit) or even the more direct derivatives, like most of the well-known Lemmy instances. But one must have an idea of why the social media is being made and design it around that purpose. Lemmy is ultimately a reddit alternative. And its most popular communities were/are either bunkers for banned communities or clones of subreddits, hosted on very general instances. There’s no defining vision. It’s an improvement, yes!, but it’s far from what a digital social space can be.

Filming hasn’t gone totally quietly in Livingston, Montana, the small town where Pawn Shop is being shot. Locals got their hands on the script, too, and started honking their car horns and attempting other small-scale disruptions to the shoot.

“We want them to know: Don’t come do this shit in our town,” one protester, who asked not to be named for fear of online retaliation, told me.

Always nice to hear about local actions like this.

The first shot takes the [sic] Melanie in the neck

kirk lol