In the middle of October, after nine and a half years and thousands of posted stories, my follower count on Twitter reached six figures. I didn’t catch a screenshot of 100 000 as it was going up, but I held off celebrating until I had some margin – the follower count is always in flux so there was no point celebrating if it was going to dip down again.
After a week, I checked again, and it stood at 100 589. This, I felt, was sufficient margin to be safe from the normal ebb and flow – I had reached 100k! I don’t usually pay much attention to numbers, but this felt like a milestone. I was proud of that.
Then, Elon Musk bought Twitter. Lol, as the kids say, and lmao. I did get a screenshot of when my follower count had gone down to 100 000. And then to 99 999. It’s currently 99 028, and I don’t expect it to ever reach six figures again.
Ah, well. Sic transit gloria mundi, and all that. I sincerely hope Twitter survives in a usable and non-fascist fashion – it would be nice to be able to celebrate ten years there in April next year – but we shall see how it goes.
On the other hand, my follower count on Mastodon has more than doubled, so there is that. It seems almost everybody fleeing Twitter has headed for the instance I was on – mastodon.social – and it has struggled to keep up with moderation. So I have decided to move to @MicroSFF@mastodon.art instead. All my followers should be transferred over (I have done such a move with a personal account, and that worked flawlessly). I will link to this post from my profile there as proof of authenticity.
Of course, I am still on Tumblr and Facebook, and I have also started to use my Instagram.
Regardless of platform, I will continue to tell my little stories until I run out of them.