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It seems like even the weather is celebrating the first anniversary of Spoutible! It’s brightly sunny, not a cloud in the sky and I think it’s pretty warm for the beginning of February.
Today, Spoutible is a year old, coinciding with the start of Black History Month. Christopher Bouzy will be launching a new feature later today, and he promised we won’t want to miss it. Once again, I believe him.
We are watching the toddling baby steps of a brand new way of existing online, a way that asks us to bring the best of ourselves, that supports the struggles with the worst of ourselves.
That doesn’t depend on us being horrible to get attention. It’s not the person who says the most reprehensible thing that gets the engagement.
Well, sometimes they get engagement but not the kind they want.
I can see the future for Spoutible, I hope you can see it too, as it strengthens and grows and expands and changes the way people act with one another when we can’t see others’ faces. As it changes what gets heard when it comes to politics and what is thrown away like the garbage it is.
This is only the first year and yet it is momentous, so many of us have found a place packed with the kinds of people who get us, far more than would be possible in any context, where we can talk openly and frankly.
Where vulnerability is met with support, not derision, not cruelty, not attempts to make people feel worse.
Do you remember when people were like that? Were they ever like that?
It takes work to maintain, there will be pests in any garden, but the garden itself is planted to sustain its own biome. I’ve praised Christopher’s foresight and vision repeatedly and I will continue to do so because if I can see the future, he can see a distant galaxy long beyond that.
I am so happy to be on Spoutible, to have transformed my social media experience entirely from bracing myself and preparing for the worst to being shocked when someone is rude. Isn’t that how it should be, among people?
Rude as an outlier, not a norm?
So on this very special day, this very special first anniversary of Spoutible, on this first day of February, I raise my coffee cup to Christopher Bouzy, a Black man who is making history.
And we get to watch in real time.
Have a great Thursday!
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