Joining the Fediverse

Dear Realists,

It’s been a while since my last post.

This year I decided to go all in on the Fediverse – focusing my attention on this galaxy of independent, not-for-profit, by the people and for the people federated social networks, beyond the walled gardens of Big Tech.

In June I started a blog titled The Future is Federated with the goal of introducing the Fediverse (some call it “Open Social Web”) to people not familiar with it.

In late July I successfully federated my personal website: elenarossini.com and published an explainer here: “The Future of Social is Here: a Show and Tell (part 2: WordPress ↔️ Fediverse)“.

And now, it’s the turn of this website, The Realists, to join the Fediverse.

What does it mean? This website will acquire some superpowers: every new post I publish will automatically appear on the Fediverse, in the feeds of my followers.

If you follow this blog from Mastodon for example, every new post will appear as a social post. If you reply to it from Mastodon (or MissKey, Friendica, or Mbin), your comment will appear on that Fediverse instance and also on this blog, in the comments section. The comments will seamlessly sync. If this sounds a little too abstract, you can read about Fediverse interoperability in my blog post mentioned before – and see concrete examples of what it looks like.

Reintroducing The Realists

I started working on The Realists years ago, thinking it would be the natural sequel of my documentary The Illusionists – this time focusing my attention on our brave new online worlds. Here is a teaser of the documentary:

There have been a few unexpected twists and turns: from Covid shutdowns, to my pregnancy and now caring for my little one. Because of my current lifestyle (not really compatible with full time film work and international travel) I had to put production of the documentary on pause. So I shifted to writing instead.

Online advertising, unattainable life ideals promoted on social media, comparison anxiety, loss of privacy, surveillance capitalism and digital literacy are the main themes I have been discussing on The Realists.

A quick word about platforms: WordPress -> Ghost -> WordPress?

This website went into hibernation as I moved my writings to a Ghost blog and newsletter (for the time being it’s available at this link but I will cease paying for it in January 2025 – so from then on this link will be broken). Ghost plans to join the Fediverse soon but still, it makes more sense for this particular project to return to its roots and run from its own website. So here I am.

The Realists Roadmap

I am planning to move my Realists Ghost archive back to WordPress, so you will discover my previous 2024 blog posts here… and going forward you will find new posts on the site AND on the Fediverse.

I am excited about The Realists having its own profile on the Fediverse: it’s like having a two-way RSS feed – fully interactive.

Here is to new beginnings.

Elena (say hi to me on Mastodon: @_elena)

P.S.: if you are curious about previous blog posts, here is a selection of the top 3 most popular ones so far:

• “Instagram vs. Reality? FaceApp and the uncanny world of photo editing apps“
• “The dark side of AI: writers Jia Tolentino and Ocean Vuong on how algorithms are killing serendipity”
• “Snow: the app that gave me negative body image“