Koss Blog

Welcome to 2025 and the lotta things hanging over us… And David Lynch just died. I hope he went out gently. It’s interesting, sort of, to see what he meant to different people. Blue Velvet was one of the most disturbing movies I’ve ever seen. I felt disturbed for days by the scissors scene… And the summer after my grandmother died, I tried to re-watch Erasure Head and cried my guts out. The previous viewing didn’t impact me that way, I was with friends in a dingy Detroit apartment, all of us on a wrinkled bed with beer and cold pizza watching a tiny screen. There’s a way company can impact how you experience film (or any art), but I recall how everyone seemed so disconnected in his movies, such an existential feeling… And yet often lacking something human for me, and so, not quite relatable, but still always impactful emotionally. I will probably revisit his work now…

Some people I’m fond of and who I have considered as part of my lit community have vanished due to all the social media corruption. I admit I’m a person with some residual abandonment issues, but having found a small creative community for the first time in my life, I am really saddened by the dismantling of it. If nothing else, I hope people find richer relationships that exist outside of social show-and-tell, character-limited interactions… I’m a bit amazed though at how easily people toss connections, almost as if this were all some kind of simulation (thanks Teresa Mestizo for seeding this concept).

About ten years ago or so, I got off Facebook for a year and mostly never communicated with people including what little family I have because that it the only way they wanted to interact.

This may be time for people to start having more picnics and for lesbians to do potlucks again. Social media has harmed us in so many ways. I think queers tried harder to get along, to build communities before online dating and social made us all seem like disposable objects.

For writerly news, I did an interview with James Diaz about my book in Anti-Heroin Chic in December. If you missed it, it’s here, and there’s another with Kristine Esser-Slentz in (Re) An Ideas Journal soon (maybe this month). Jami McCarty wrote a review of my book for New Pages (also out this month). I will be posting links! We talk some about grief in both of the interviews–also, about privacy issues, grandmothers, and writing trauma.

I have found it increasingly difficult to promote my work on social as my Meta accounts saw a shift awhile back, greatly reducing my reach. I believe it is shadowbanning. A lot of people including creatives are complaining about it. But also, some time last year, all the hashtags I used to tag queers disappeared (or were banned). Instagram won’t publish an actual list, but you can tell when you type or search (through suggestions) if they exist. The problem is that they will penalize your account for using them. I lost track of most of the queers I interacted with–and we used to see each other’s post regularly. You can read about this online. Instagram has been called out multiple times since 2016 for taking negative actions on queer accounts. I have spoken about the recent shift for months, but what I find is people are not alarmed about things until it impacts them personally. Right now, Meta’s tactics are impacting a lot of people, and they’ve given the red light for people to harass queers, not just ignoring it as they have for most of their history.

And Twitter (I still call it that), is another asshole you don’t need me to tell you about. My reach on Twitter, the month my book came out (before the election) was reduced by 75%. I used to count on 4000 views for a post (that is no influencer number), but suddenly, I was lucky to get 1000. Anyone who has been there long knows this isn’t good for a book. I feel really discouraged. But I’m staying–because I’m stubborn, and because there are people who are kind and who enrich my life with their art and their presence. I don’t think people will spring back as they did in previous exoduses, but I don’t know where this is all leading. I hated Bluesky the first time I was there, but some think it has improved. For now, I don’t have the bandwidth for another channel.

I will be doing another post about social soon, but I just wanted to drop in with a ’25 post. I hope you’re all hanging in there. I hope something comes of this cease fire, but I’m already hearing whacky things. Stay sane in the crazy new year, and find people to be safe with and furry creatures to cuddle. And please consider also that if you leave, they win. It’s divide and conquer. These evil people know what they’re after.

xo,

Koss