Let me tell you about my lord and savior decentralized social media
Mastodeez nuts
Okay, so I never used Twitter but figured I'd give Mastodon a try.
But what do you even do there? Is it just a place where you wait for specific people to shout into the void? And then what?
Also how do I even find interesting subjects or people to follow?
Twitter/microblogging is a weird thing in general but you seem to have the idea. It can be useful for following events or people who write interesting things.
Mastodon hashtags are the way to discover conversations and people to follow, they go across instances in search.
Sometimes it's useful following specific projects or organizations you're interested in to be notified when anything interesting is going on. In a way similar to an RSS feed I suppose
Whats an RSS feed?
Essentially a web feed to have a single timeline from multiple sources. Think of it as Google News but you manually choose the sources and it's chronological.
They are also RSS feeds by default, just append .rss to the back of the profile address and add to your feed reader. For example, to tune into Elvira Mistress of the Dark in your rss reader the link would be:
https://universeodon.com/@TheRealElvira.rss
I just love the fact that Mark Ruffalo is using Mastodon
@Cuteblooded @Troll I just follow a bunch of people and hashtags. Anybody suggests following something or someone I do. It's easy to unfollow if you end up not liking the content from someone or some hashtag.
I always had the same issue the few times I tried to use mastodon and twitter.
@Cuteblooded @Troll shout into the void... Or voice an opinion... If enough of us voice an opinion it might change things... the alternative is keeping silent and that is not mentally healthy
@Cuteblooded @Troll I found that posting about stuff that interests me, following bright people who respond, and using hashtags is not a bad way to start. And check the local feed and the fedi feed from time to time to find new people to interact with.
#welcome
Me opening the door thinking you're referring to the band
Why yes, I do have a moment to SPLIT YOUR LUNGS WITH BLOOD AND THUNDER
Best album. I'll never get over the opening line: I THINK THAT SOMEONE IS TRYING TO KILL MEEEEE
I saw them when they opened for Primus. Killer show.
My favorite metal band??
I THINK THAT SOMEONE IS TRYING TO KILL ME
I'm in this picture and I don't like it
I thought we're gonna talk about a music band, aren't we?
I saw them for the first time during the Unheavenly Skye tour.
My first time seeing Coheed too!
It was one hell of a show.
No we worship lemmy in this house mastodon is a harassy
a harassing heresy ? defo sounds like the witnesses
I'm having fun there, though there are a good amount of spammers there already.
I know all about Mastodon. Been doing it just about everyday for years, sometimes twice a day!
Problem for me is that Twitter for me is about the official announcement-y things which aren't leaving lol. It's not great, but for football news all the journalists are still there, and so are the clubs.
Look up nitter
The way to get that to change is to not go to Twitter, and if any of those people have another outlet, read and interact with that one.
Looking forward to Book of Mastodon, the musical
I think I'd rather keep Mastodon small and quirky. The moment it starts to feel like twitter, I'm off.
Nah it'll never be like Twitter. Those users will all line up for Bluesky
Or threads.
Honestly, I feel like Mastodon is kinda never going to be like Twitter, even if its user count were to grow by two orders of magnitude. There are several reasons why, as the other replies point out, but the most important (IMO) is that Mastodon is just not a profit-driven platform. And if Mastodon is not a profit-driven platform, it is not designed to maximize user engagement. And if it is not designed to maximize user engagement, it is not designed to encourage toxic behavior.
At the risk of sounding like a door-to-door fediverse evangelist: the good thing about mastodon is you can always move to a small and quirky instance, or even start your own small and quirky instance and defederate from any parts that you don't like.
