Preliminary mastodon; and feelings

[superborb]

I have been using mastodon lately in lieu of twitter (I'm @superborb@federatedfandom.net), and I have some preliminary thoughts. I also am having FEELINGS about another platform disintegrating, which are mostly like, me wanting to get them out somewhere.

Mastodon is (to me, anyway, and based on how I used twitter), very much like open source twitter, which makes it a great replacement for how I like to fandom. Of course, the critical component is user uptake, which is unknown at this time and also what led to being all up in my feelings re: platform disintegration.

Things I like about mastodon:
- I prefer to follow specific people, who have a broad range of interests, with forays outside my circle akin to 'friendsfriends'. The 'local' and 'federated' timelines, at least at this point when things are moving but not ultra fast, substitute well. (For those who do not feel this way, mastodon does have hashtags one can to follow and a.gup.pe for a DW comms / groups equivalent.)
- I like being able to see who people follow. I find others' followings to be an easy way to browse for interesting people and thoughts, and better than general hashtags, which I never really understood.
- I prefer a platform to be text-first, with some images/videos for flavor.
- I require the ability to turn off boosts (the reblog / retweet equivalent) on a per-person basis. (This is, I suspect, why I never was able to jive with tumblr.)
- As your server does impact your experience, the ability to download all your data and move servers becomes a necessity.
- Philosophically, I believe in open-source and federated software.

Things that are annoying about mastodon:
- There is no equivalent to a friends-lock. The followers-lock + requiring followers to be approved combination kind of substitutes, but it's clear that it's conceptualized as a public forum first.
- Threading is terrible on my server, though there are alternatives like glitch that potentially fix this.
- People seem to find it confusing and hold misconceptions about it, which I must resist reply-guying. This is a me problem.

Things that other people might want to consider:
- People with admin access to the server's backend can see your DMs if they put in effort to deliberately look.
- There are single-user activitypub instances, which is an interesting possibility for experimentation. Also, then you can pick the server name to be ~aesthetic~.
- The server you pick affects your experience, though as mentioned about, you can always switch at a later date. The biggest impacts AFAICT are: 1) your local (okay, and federated too) timeline is based on your server; 2) if you pick a server that has bad behavior, you'll find other servers have defederated it; and 3) lots of user experience choices come down to the exact software the server is using and mod choices. For instance, editing toots, content warning policies, and threading are all server-based.

Okay now FEELINGS:
The saddest part of a platform disintegrating -- and this time, happening much faster than usual -- is the loss of loose connections. Anyone I talk to often is, of course, a relationship unlikely to be lost by a platform change. I also recognize that, after I looked for people still in fandom after a decade away, the folks who were still in fandom were easy to find and the folks who still wanted to be found were easy to find. But a lot of my acquaintances, caught up in real life and already drifting away from fandom, are likely to be lost, and I'm sad about it! I know this is a little bit like, well, you never regularly talked anyway, but a) when we did talk, I found a lot of value in it! and b) unlike IRL, the chances of reconnection drop precipitously once someone's abandoned their nym.

I suppose I ought to cultivate more of a sense of 'if it's meant to be, we'll reconnect in the future'. After all, I found people again after fandom left for tumblr.

Comments

[dragongirlg]

I'm on tumblr because a lot of people seem to be going back there, and I enjoy the shitposts, but I agree it's overwhelming! I'm never really sure if I'm doing it right. I just found out about the new xkit this morning, which lets you filter out reblogs and only see original posts, so I'm going to give that a try.

Part of me is relieved that my circle is becoming a lot smaller, but another part of me is mourning the loss of loose connections as well. Twitter created a very nice distance between dreamwidth (where I feel like there's a higher baseline intensity due to the longform posting+access filters+demographics) and tumblr (where everyone is shitposting so there's not really a chance to connect). I'm still active on discord, so I think it'll fill the loose connections niche for now, but it was nice having an intermediate.

[superborb]

Ohh, I didn't realize there was a different xkit. I guess most people don't post a lot of original posts though, because the dynamic around interaction is so different?

I mean, my dream is DW + a chat application probably, ahahahahah.

[dragongirlg]

Oh, DW + chat would be awesome.

And yeah, the "welcome back to tumblr" and "intro to tumblr" posts floating around have really solidified that the dominant tumblr culture is sharing other people's stuff and/or adding commentary as you wish. If you only post original stuff without interacting it's considered a faux pas (even though tumblr is set up really nicely for original blogs, including the messaging system and the community aspect!) Ah, well. I'll stay on it and try to navigate it, and just kind of see where I land.

[superborb]

I don't really understand that, but I suppose that's why I never jived with tumblr. I guess I'll continue crossposting to the annoyance of anyone who stumbles upon my tumblr *shrug*

[dragongirlg]

I'll be crossposting most stuff myself!