Blog Number One: The "Likes" Experiment

Hello! As I type this, the social media website Cohost is four days away from going read-only and a little over three months away from closing entirely: on October 1, 2024, users will no longer be able to post on the site. In the three months that follow, Archive Team will work to preserve as much of the site as they can, and Cohost staff will begin the process of exporting user data. The site is scheduled to go offline on December 31, 2024, redirecting to archive.org on January 1, 2025. This stinks, but now that the wound isn't as fresh, and as someone who has been online for over 20 years now and has experienced the defunct-ification of many a website, it isn't the end of the world. We will regroup, we will come back together, perhaps sooner than we think and in a place that's even better (I do tend to try to be an optimist). That being said, there is the looming question: what's next?

Many Cohost users, and people jaded with the state of current social media in general, believe a return to personal websites and RSS feeds is the answer. After the internet consolidated into a few core websites that everybody visited and interacted on, there is a perceived dearth of interesting online spaces where people are free to express themselves in a way unbounded by Formats. I agree, with the following caveat: while the numbers game and ladder climbing of most social media can be aggravating, it's nice to see when someone liked what you posted. The public metrics of social media that Cohost forewent - the comparison between each other, the wondering why X got more attention than Y - I can do without. But dang it, I want the likes. I enjoy knowing another person was amused enough by what I wrote, or what I drew to click a little button of approval. I enjoy letting other people know that I appreciated their contributions in kind. I'm sorry, but it's nice! And while you can bookmark a website, or click a star on an RSS feed entry (or click "like" on their update if you have a Neocities account, but you know, numbers) the person who wrote it will never know unless you take the time to open their contact form (if you have one) and compose a professionally worded e-mail. That's scary.

Well, I have an idea on how to remedy this. Maybe it's a remedy that only I need. And I'm sorry to say, it still involves composing an e-mail, albeit not a professionally worded one. And it takes two clicks instead of one click. But most of the work is done for you already. If you can clear all of those hurdles, if I haven't lost you, then we're golden. We're off to a new land of likability. Introducing: the mailto link.

If you cleared the hurdles and I hadn't lost you, you might be walking backwards into the bushes like Homer Simpson right now. "Scroungin' 4 Catsup, mailto links have existed since time immemorial. They aren't new. You didn't invent them." Sure. But this is a mailto link that you click (possibly on a heart) to open, and all of the important fields are conveniently populated to let you simply hit "send" and you can continue browsing. Isn't that neat? Let's get to it, then!

IF YOU WISH TO BE "LIKED", YOU WILL NEED:

- an e-mail address. Duh!!!!!!!!!!!! (Sorry, I am a child of the 90s, that's just the kind of sass you get from our kind. I also made this joke already in the readme for Pitch and Putt Club).
- the following code (apologies in advance for how ugly this is, I cannot present it without it breaking my tables and throwing my stylesheet in the garbage):

Click <a href="mailto:username@example.com?subject=liked%20the%20post%20Test%20Post%21&body=The%20post%20url%20is%3A%20https%2F%2Fbluey%2Etv">here</a> to like this post!
<br><i>(Opens a mailto link)</i>

Which will appear as:

Click here to like this post!
(Opens a mailto link)

As you hopefully can tell, "mailto:" is the user's e-mail address. "subject=" indicates the subject line, or title, of the e-mail. "body=" is the text the recipient will see when they open the e-mail. There must be a question mark after the e-mail address and "subject", and an ampersand (&) between the end of the subject line and "body". You cannot type spaces in the subject line or body, so you must use "%20" (no quotes) to act as a spaces instead. If you need a line break in the body, use "%0D%0A" (no quotes). You aren't able to use regular punctuation; this URL encoding reference can help [note: regular punctuation in a mailto link does seem to work in Chrome, but I recommend encoding it so it works in all browsers].

Is it convoluted? Yes. Is it complicated? A little. But will it let people like your posts? Yes!

Of course, it's as customizable as you want it to be, including using an image in place of "click here." Like so:

<a href="mailto:username@example.com?subject=liked%20the%20post%20Test%20Post%21&body=The%20post%20url%20is%3A%20https%2F%2Fbluey%2Etv"><img src="../pagepics/clickheart.png"></a> to like this post!
<br><i>(Opens a mailto link)</i>

Which would then appear as:

to like this post!
(Opens a mailto link)

It goes without saying, you will have to provide your own image hosting!

If you are unfamiliar with "plus addressing", you can add a plus sign after your e-mail handle but before the @ sign, along with a word, and it will send it to your mailbox. For example, if your e-mail address is johnconnor@theresistance[dot]com, someone could send an e-mail to johnconnor+kyle@theresistance[dot]com and it would still go to you. Make sure your e-mail provider supports it. Gmail and Outlook do. Protonmail does as well, but you must use a minus symbol (-) instead. Fastmail allows either + or - to be used. Yahoo does not have plus addressing. Regardless of what I've said here though, make sure to test it beforehand! Plus addressing allows you to more easily sort your mail into categories, which I definitely suggest doing in this case: now you'll have a "likes" folder! Wow!

I would suggest adding the url of the page you're including the mailto link on in the body so that anybody who is "going through their likes" later can go back to the given page.

IF YOU WISH TO "LIKE", YOU WILL NEED:
- an e-mail address. We've been over this before.
- an email client. This will open the mailto link once you click on it. Make sure you have it associated with the right e-mail! I understand this may be where a lot of people draw the line, and I get it. It's a bit cumbersome. But hey. It's an experiment! By default, Windows will try to open mailto links in the Mail app - but that isn't required. You can choose to have mailto links opened directly in your browser using your e-mail of choice. Here is a tutorial on how to open mailto links in Chrome, and here is a guide on how to set up opening mailto links in Firefox. On Windows, you'll probably have to go into Default Apps and change Email to your browser, otherwise it will still try opening mailto links in the Mail app.
- Uhh, moxie?

The biggest risks I can imagine with this method of "liking" posts are spam (too many "likes" being caught up in a spam folder, as well as the potential for a spammer to get ahold of your e-mail, though I suppose the existence of spam filtering in the former example kind of negates the latter one) and potential harassment (a person who does not like what you had to say on your site now has your e-mail address). However, these problems are not exclusive to personal websites and probably have an equal (or greater) possibility of happening on good old fashioned social media - especially in spaces where you use your real name and photos.

So there you have it, the "Likes" experiment. Will it succeed? Will it replace the need for social media in general? Doubtful on both fronts, but it's interesting to try it out. Personally, at this point in time the idea of having a long-form blog section on this website is mostly to fill the gap between now and when the next niche social media site I prefer to use will appear. Until then, thanks for reading, I hope you've found this interesting, and hey: maybe leave a like below! It will finally open a real, non-example mailto link :)