How to keep in touch with me in 2025

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I don’t know if Twitter¹ is where I want to be for much longer. Over the past year, things there have progressively got worse in ways I am finding it difficult to ignore now. Conversation is broken. What I consume and how I consume it is broken, and depends on the whims of an unlikeable manchild. Musk’s takeover of the platform has had ripple effects in India too. Browse the replies to any slightly dissenting voices, and you’ll find scores of right-wing trolls with blue checks being boosted to the top, now being paid for their vileness. There are dozens of accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers motivated only around doxxing and bullying people who do not agree with a very specific kind of agenda. It is depressing to witness how necessary hate has become to this platform. I no longer see things I care about on my feeds, only things that will provoke a reaction out of me. The hate will only grow stronger, and the strategic policies that embolden this will be strengthened too. This will eventually have cascading effects in India, and engaging on such a platform is neither moral nor good for my own mental peace.

It is not easy for everyone to leave, and it definitely isn’t easy for me. As an early career practitioner, Twitter is what I’ve relied on to build my ‘network’. My internship at Reuters, project commissions, job, heck even the flat I am renting right now materialized through connections made on Twitter. Thinking about ditching it is a scary feeling because what if I miss out on opportunities that will help me grow? I don’t know the answer to these feelings. Maybe it doesn’t have to be a cold-turkey exit. Perhaps it can be a slow stepping back, finding other places to exist and connect while reworking my presence from a space that’s become increasingly hostile. Something that doesn’t demand I witness hate to stay relevant in my field.

Now, I’m running out of social media platforms that I am active on. The last time I posted anything on Instagram was 5 years ago. Which is why I’ve been thinking about what I can do to keep in touch with people.

You'll start seeing less of me on Twitter as I shift my energy to other spaces. The account stays up for now, but I'll be spending more time elsewhere and try to shift my network to other places. If you're someone who has followed my work and would like to keep in touch, here's what I will be trying for the rest of this year.

Email

Once every month, perhaps even more rarely, I’ll write up a little email newsletter with things I’ve been working on and other things of interest related to dataviz, web dev, maps and more. I have never restricted myself to talking about one thing, so I can’t promise you that it will be about XYZ, but hopefully this feels like a friend just talking to you about things they’ve been engaging with and felt like sharing.

Subscribing here also lets you subscribe to Diagram Chasing, my other platform for dataviz shenanigans. Please don’t hesitate to uncheck that if you’d like.

Subscribe

Also subscribe to Diagram Chasing

These will be syndicated on this website as well.

Bluesky

I’ve been on Bluesky since 2023, but became more active there late last year. I can control the feeds I subscribe to, what I see more of, it’s open and there’s no murky algorithm (yet). You’ll find me posting random updates there.

Earlier this year, I decided to try tracing character journeys from each Sherlock Holmes story on London's 1893 Ordnance Survey #maps. It's great fun. As the street structure has remained largely the same, you can sometimes use ORS tools for routing between points. This one's the Red Headed League.

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— Aman Bhargava (@aman.bh) Nov 8, 2024 at 7:20 PM

For what its worth, the rstats and dataviz community seems to have assembled once more after ages on Bluesky. As of now, it is worth being on.

Website

This website has and always will be my primary digital garden. All new work is added here, and I will try to write more. Last week, I set up a links page where I want to try microblogging about things I find along with short commentaries, inspired by Simon Willison. This will grow over time and I will add more things that help organize it better.

Sharing interesting links with commentary is a low effort, high value way to contribute to internet life at large.

Both my blog and the linkposts feed are also available as RSS feeds, for you to remain up to date in whatever manner you wish. If you’re not familiar with RSS, I highly recommend giving it a thought. It allows you to read without clutter, on your own terms and faff-free.

As far as possible, I will publish here first and syndicate elsewhere (and sometimes, vice versa). Do visit from time to time.

Discord

Lastly, I’m opening up our Discord server where we work on our Diagram Chasing projects. It’s quite empty right now, since it’s just Vonter and I on it for the most part but if more people join, I’ll be happy to share WIPs, discuss dataviz and just talk.

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Let’s find better ways to stay connected. Perhaps this is an opportunity for us to fix how we engage with each other’s work and ideas - something more meaningful than what has currently become the norm. I hope to see you around.