Why you should follow Phoenix History Adventuring on Patreon, not on Facebook



If you've been on Facebook for as long as I have, and I've been there longer than I care to admit, you know that it used to be a fun place. It was slightly goofy, and it really was a place for friends. And over the years I've tried to keep it that way for myself, focusing on the wonderfully trivial things that make life so wonderful - like photos of cats, that sort of thing. And I was a member of several groups for a long time, for gardening, and for old photos of Phoenix - I even managed a group for several years. And then it got awful, and a couple of years ago I decided to look around and see if there was a better place for me to be.

I created an account on Instagram, which is definitely more cheerful than Facebook, but really it's a phone app - not really a good fit for the wonderful high-resolution photos that I've been collecting for years. But really the best place for me to be is Patreon.

If you've never heard of Patreon, it's not surprising. And I have to admit that I was wary about it, and eased into it slowly. It's taken me a while to figure out how to make it a cheerful place, and I think I've got it.

Patreon is a place for creative people to post their stuff, and either charge people for it, or just encourage people to help out. I do the latter, which is kind of like when you go to a museum that's free, but there's a place for a donation if you want to. Speaking for myself, I tend to be someone who likes to go to free museums, and still likes to donate, so it makes sense to me. If that makes no sense to you, don't worry about it, it's free.

My audience tends to be people like me, who are, ahem, of age, and who are interested either in memories of Phoenix, or learning more about its history. And I understand why Facebook is so popular with that demographic, because many of those people don't go anywhere else on the web, and are mostly there because their children, and grandchildren are on it. I understand.

But Facebook is not a good place for my history adventuring images. In addition to the strange, and dare I say, "toxic" environment there I personally find it a depressing place to visit. And from the point of view of a graphic designer who loves to see high-quality images, I know that Facebook does so much image compression that it really does spoil all of the work that I've done on those images to make them crisp and clean. Patreon doesn't compress them, and they look great there.

So there you go. Thank you letting me talk about it here. And I will continue to write in this blog, don't worry about that. But mostly I'll be over on Patreon. See you there! - Brad
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