Those of you who know me know that I'm one of the people behind Sorted Social Club, a Colorado non-profit social club with the mission of creating temporary autonomous zones that appear in the guise of what used to be called "raves". In other words, we will seek out a space that will comfortably hold 200-300 people, dress it up with a high-quality sound system with substantial low-frequency soundwave reproduction, blinky lights, free water and other accoutrements, with a structure based upon the standard of a dancefloor, dj booth, etc. We research capable DJs who specialize in long (2+ hour), diverse sets, who will tell a story through a sequence of tracks (aka "tunes", "songs", "bangers", "dancefloor weapons", etc.) and create -via the interaction between the people on the dancefloor and the DJ- a shared experience. When this works (and I am proud to say that it works pretty much every time), the effort facilitates deep, meaningful connections between other participants (aka members of the social club), and allows all involved to exist, more than normal, in the present moment. Some of the best memories of my life are from going to raves, having lovely conversations with others at raves, playing music myself, and of course, dancing.
Over the past few years my enjoyment of the curator role at these gatherings has been steadily diminshing, and given my passion for the music has not diminished, and in general, I find myself having a splendid time at the parties themselves, I've been trying to identify a reason for the decline, and I think I now know the answer... It's because, like most others, I have been forced to get the word out about these gatherings by promoting them on toxic social media properties, namely, Facebook & Instagram.
In order to get these gatherings to a point where they draw enough participants paying an entry fee to cover the substantial financial costs involved, I've had to maintain a presence both as an individual, and as the social club, on these closed social media sites. By and large, I detest everything about this experience, and mostly feel trapped there. It's a situation that I've spent a lot of time complaining about, but wasn't doing a whole lot to change. This was mostly because I didn't see any good alternatives. Now maybe I wasn't looking very hard, but with the rise of BlueSky, ATproto, and now, blogging platforms like WhiteWind, I am feeling an excitement and optimism I have not felt in a while.
Over the next few months, I am going to work on extricating myself, and the social club, from the prison of FB & IG. I'll be putting work into growing our mailing list, lifting our website from the declining state of bitrot it has been in, but mostly, I'm going to be investigating every possible option built on the AT protocol that I can avail myself of. Posting a long pseudo stream-of-consciousness-like statement of intent here on WhiteWind feels like a promising start.
It's so nice to have options, and to actually be on a new platform without the hassle of trying to build up a new social network of following and followers just to dip my toes, and discovering a new & better secret sauce. I look forward to the journey with an excitement and optimism that has felt rare the last few years. If you're a person who finds themselves in a similar position, or has similar goals, I would love to hear from you about the things you're doing. Since it's ATproto, you know where to find me :-)
