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| Roman Forum in 2011 (image is my own, as used on my Facebook page) |
If, for whatever reason, you ever want to get in contact with me please leave a comment at the end of any blogpost, even if it is unrelated to the post itself. I’m very happy to respond to (polite and civilised) comments, questions and observations.
If you have questions about Roman polytheism and are still on Facebook I recommend joining the group “Cultus Deorum: Religio Romana (original)”, I learnt a lot in this group during my first few years of exploring Roman polytheism and I am very grateful to some of the people I engaged with there. I also quite like the “Roman Religion Reformists Group”.
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Postscript (October 2021): so I deleted Instagram and Twitter in early January 2021 and Facebook, Reddit and Pinterest in early February 2021. What I have felt mostly is a sense of relief. There is something kind of stressful about having a public version of oneself on the internet with whom all kinds of random strangers, irl acquaintances and pseudo-friends can interact with. Also, I didn't like the sense that content (including some very well targeted ads) I was viewing regularly was being filtered and manipulated by big tech. I feel like I have reclaimed that time (before 2008, when I first got on social media) when I had a better sense of myself as a private individual. It's almost a bit like I have got a part of my soul, or my dignity, back. I realise that this blog is another kind of internet persona, but generally people who read it are interested in the topics of the posts, and any projection of my personality is very much on the side, and tbh hardly anyone I know irl reads (or even knows about) this blog, which is how I like it. There have been some downsides with leaving social media though. Firstly, I have effectively lost contact with some overseas relatives, so that is kind of sad, but I didn't really know them all that well and I was probably never going to see them again anyway. Secondly, I have sort of missed social media for its distracting entertainment value, hence to some extent I've quasi-replaced it with Telegram. I just follow random pages and scroll down, kind of like Instagram but without the ads, but I almost never comment and I don't engage with people I know for real through this app. There are some cool pages, for example:
- t.me/privateart (Western art, mostly historical)
- t.me/wildlifen (animal videos)
- t.me/GreekLeague (all things Hellenic)
- t.me/survivethejive (European Paganism and ancestry)
- t.me/ThirstForBeauty (Western art, mostly historical)
- t.me/jultomte (awesome pics of Tomten)
- t.me/sketchheadgroup (contemporary art)
- t.me/birdcontent (for bird lovers)
- t.me/collispalatinus (for lovers of ancient Rome)
One of the best things about Telegram is the lack of an algorithm - it doesn't feed me content, rather I find new content organically by clicking on pages that other people I follow have forwarded content from. Using this method I have found content that is far more diverse and way more amusing than anything I ever saw on Facebook or Instagram. There's also some messy free speech (and yeah sometimes I'm put off by it), but that's ok; it's not hard to just unfollow an account where things are getting toxic. I tend to think that being exposed to large volumes of a diversity of unfiltered free speech is more likely to make people geuninely open minded and tolerant of difference than anything else. It's hard to be racist when you're laughing at memes posted by people from all around the world. Overall I am super happy I deleted Facebook and co, and most definitely have no intention of going back.
thanks:)
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