I can't speak for ~tffb, but I did the same a ways back, but long enough ago that none of my posts show on the first page.
For me it was mostly a response to concluding I didn't really belong, and thus didn't want my verbiage persisting here - a sort of "What's the point of having a persistent presence if/when almost nobody acknowledges posts and/or wishes to interact?"
That may sound ridiculous to those of you who seemingly have ice in your veins with respect to whether or not you're being read - a condition that seems practically a price of admission to "smol" spaces. But I quite simply have not yet arrived at that enlightened state of not giving a shit whether or not putting effort into writing is balanced by evidence that it had any value to others.
That said, there are half a handful of contributors here whose writing and "replies interaction" I regularly appreciate. So I lurk to reply. But I can't see regularly exposing my thoughts/experiences in a place where essentially nobody cares enough to acknowledge it, as petty as that may sound to the icy veined....
_That_ said, I've been injected text into online places for over three decades due to my naive belief that someone might find it worthwhile enough to respond to, and that such a response might lead to an ongoing interaction beneficial to both of us, and so it's long been a rather primary habit. My solution was to create a standalone blog that I mostly don't advertise save in low traffic, what-might-be-called "goofball" places. I create entries there many time a day, and do so while convinced a fantasy that others read and enjoy there is a reality. Oddly, what gives that fantasy a chance of feeling like a reality is knowing for sure nobody is reading it, because then I don't have to feel unworthy of acknowledgement or response because, well, I already know the readership is zero.
Does that make sense?
It was actually revelatory to me: that receiving no acknowledgement in a place where I know nobody is reading feels infinitely better than receiving next to no acknowledgement in a place where I know there are many readers. If anything, the latter feels somewhere between silly and embarrassing, a la "Ha! Look at that pathetic attention-seeking numbskull posting again despite all of us being able to see he doesn't receive any replies anyway! LOL!!!"
So, I honestly don't get how followers of the smol religion do it. I can merely imagine several explanations ranging from selfless enlightenment to being dead inside.
What I know for sure is it feels very... not _wrong_, but pointless to me: a bunch of people posting in the same place, but only a very small percentage interactive over the thoughts.
Then it occurs to me that many Smolians come from a place of having over-indulged "social media". Well, I didn't. I was an early adopter of the likes of Facebook and Twitter, but fairly quickly an early quitter, because most of my online experience was USENET longform, and so posting brief quips, photos, etc. seemed like settling for way less. So I didn't come to smol spaces as therapy from addictive short form interactions. But since most others seemingly have, I wind up feeling out of place, which feeling can quickly degenerate into feeling unworthy of the silent masses' acknowledgement.
Heh.. I hesitate to post this reply, because I'm mostly on a path to becoming free of attachment to this an so much else, and writing this has stirred emotion in the vicinity of frustration that I'll likely look back upon (you know, three seconds have hitting the "Reply" button..) as reasonable inner flogging for sinning-against-that-path.
But you've heard of backsliding, no? :-)
I guess I'm just a sore loser, where what was lost was the glory days of pre- "Eternal September" USENET, where spending goodly time/energy creating and polishing lots of paragraphs guaranteed more gloriously inline-quote-infested long replies than one had time in the day to absorb, let alone respond to. But it was fun as hell trying to keep up with, because the exchanges were challenging, enlightening, and guaranteed more of the same.
Oh well....
oh this is the first time ive seen anybody acknowledge the loneliness of posting in this place, it's quite cathartic. obviously i love the Midnight, even if i'm of those people who dont post or reply often and so am equally the cause of the feeling as well as a victim of it... thank you for sharing your thoughts!! :)
Hello ~inquiry, thanks for going through the troubles of explaining a possible answer.
a sort of "What's the point of having a persistent presence if/when almost nobody acknowledges posts and/or wishes to interact?"
Well, while I can accept that others wish for interaction, I do not write for "them". At least not as a reason or excuse to write. I know, that readers exist and very occasionally I receive a quote or email message. However, I have been called guilty of producing almost exclusive "tech type" content. And yes, that's what I mainly write about. In the hope that it may be useful to others, as an acknowledgement to those who answer a lot of my technical questions by their writing. I have voice my personal strong opinions a few times, e.g. here now, or when ew0k excluded some gemini site from their ~antenna feed and the word "censorship" was thrown in. My choice. If no one reads my posts, fine. I have referred back to my own posts in the past. So they are for my future self as well.
Any expectation of interaction is quickly leading to extended online time, the word "addiction" comes to mind. And that is exactly how the likes of twitter and facebook work. This is why books on "Digital Minimalism" even exist. The question has been raised here not long ago. I have not been on social media other than uucp some 30 years back. I am stuck in the age of mailing lists :).
There is one more comment I wish to make. By deleting their own posts, ~tffb has also rendered the threads with answers unusable, they very much n-ack-ed the existence of those very interactions, they wished for. I don't get this.
Cheers!