An active social media presence is considered a business requisite—and don’t you wonder how it got that way?

Leaving that aside for just a second, watching thoughtful friends and acquaintances negotiate the hazards of social media has broadened and deepened my understanding of the phrase “cognitive dissonance.” Every one of them has friends who have been deeply hurt by bad actors on social media. Every one of them has personally experienced negative emotions and wasted time on negative engagements. Then comes the ‘but’.

It’s true: businesses need to engage with their communities to survive. It’s true: some businesses say outright that social media was vital to their success and they have the numbers to prove it, which is more impressive.

Social media, done well, can lead to silly, friendly shared moments, to thoughtful discourses, and occasionally to long-lasting friendships—and the occasional mention of an amazing Kickstarter (thank you, thank you, Indie Game Alliance). In the last three years, I’ve dipped my toes into a few social media pools. I’ve toyed with Twitter, wandered through Facebook, and dallied with Discord. Mostly, I’ve listened to plenty of conversation about different tools, groups, and pools. Then we started Unformed Worlds, and since I had some fun a few years back posting haikus on Twitter (not under my own name), I created a company account (@UnformedWorlds). Within about a week, relatively reliable news sources were reporting that half the staff of Twitter was being fired. My immediate reaction was, “What an unprecedented opportunity to learn about alternatives from people who have tried them and are now abandoning the Twittership.”

So, I’ve been listening and watching: some moving to TikTok, some to Instagram, most shifting the bulk of their effort to a secondary platform they’ve already built. Then I saw Robin D. Laws’ tweet about dice.camp. So I took a look. I had encountered Mastodon on one of my dives into social media but had no idea whether they had a reasonable TTRPG presence. Now I have a keyword: dice.camp.

I like what I see. I’m sure it has flaws, some of them are already apparent, but open-source is something my husband and I support as much as possible. I mean, this was composed on LibreOffice and comes to you courtesy of my Ubuntu box and if you’ve glanced at the credits in our published adventures, you know that the GIMP is my preferred image editing tool. The idea of an ad-free space where ‘block’ means ‘block’ is tempting. I also like this ‘group of small communities’ feel. I’ve subscribed to I forget how many Discord servers. Some I left very quickly. Some I have found to be inclusive, diverse, welcoming spaces, some are great for TTRPGs, and some are both (thank you, Coyote & Crow).

So we’ve joined it. We may take the plunge and try one or two other spaces, too, but for now, you’ll can reach us on Mastodon at @UnformedWorlds@dice.camp .