Again, it’s my birthday. As I reached the midpoint of my 30s, another year passed as I turned 35. Sure, I didn’t accomplish too much when I was 34, but I may as well share my thoughts.
As previously mentioned, I wasn’t prepared for the JLPT N2 since I was still finishing the rest of the WaniKani and Bunpro content. Of course, I didn’t do that well since I wasn’t fully aware of the test format, as I shared my experience earlier this year. This time, I will prepare myself now that I’m familiar with the test format. All the focus is to improve my reading and listening skills by doubling down on immersion from now on and doing some test prep until the day of the test.
Aside from that, while I spent a whole year off Twitter, now called X., I moved entirely to the Fediverse with a limited presence on Bluesky. I feel sad about how fragmented the Anime fandom and the blogosphere are. As Reddit gets even worse and X becomes a social network promoting hate, bigotry, and fascist ideologies, it’s sad that there is a lot of interest when it comes to people moving to alternatives.
I don’t think the old days will ever come back, and it will get worse with AI in the picture and further enshittification. After all, these extensive social networks need to be profitable as the venture capitalist money isn’t coming in. We need to start thinking about building our own fandom communities that are not hosted on big platforms and instead own by the people in the fandom through blogging, forums, and of course the Fediverse.
I hope people will move to social networks run by regular people like myself and not controlled by big corporations. After all, I’m trying to build a Japanese media community on the new frontier with the Fediverse, which you can get your WordPress blog on to. After all, this year, a good chunk of comments made here are from Mastodon and Misskey (the Japanese Twitter-like version of Mastodon). You can learn more here if you still want to learn more about the Japanese media community I’ve been building since late 2022, you can learn more here. It’s not just the Fediverse with Mastodon and Misskey, but I also want to build a forum community and provide blog hosting for those who want to get started with anime/manga blogging.
Even if you prefer Bluesky, connecting with those on Mastodon through a Fediverse bridge is possible. I hope more people will adopt it and even get back to blogging.
That said, while I’m getting older, although I don’t quite look like it, I like having a positive mindset. Hopefully, I will attend an anime convention next year or eventually visit Japan. Well, we have to wait and see. Feel free to say Happy Birthday to me in the comments.
Happy Birthday @chikorita157@chikorita157.com!!! 🎉 :ChikaYay:
Thank you so much for your efforts in bulding a japanese media community here in fedi :zerotwoheartlove:
Hope you have a good day today and enjoy it!!! :meowbouncing::meowflower:
@chikorita157 Happy Birthday! :abunhdhappyhop:
@chikorita157@chikorita157.com Happy birthday!
Even though the wider situation for fandom is sad, you’ve been an amazing admin and done a lot bringing together a community in these servers. I hope you have a great day and may next year’s wishes come true!
Happy birthday!!!!!
Happy birthday!
Regarding the state of social media — I’ll go on record and say everything you forecast when Twitter changed ownership has come to past. If anything, I can see evidence to support your statement “I like having a positive mindset.”
Thanks for sakurajima.moe. It’s a comfortable space for anime!
@chikorita157 I remembered. Happy bday.
Very late but Happy Birthday! Trying to be positive these days is hard but well, life wouldn’t be any easier if everything was, uh, easy.
/attempt to be deep
You’ve done a good job using what the Fedi provides and creating Sakurajima et all–it’s been a long time since I felt like it was the “old days” without having to go back in time and experience everything else that’s not good lol. Glad to be on Sakurajima.moe, and may you have many more birthdays!
While I’m late to the party, thanks everyone!