Mastodon (Not the Band) Classic or Dud

moodles try clicking e.g. on my profile and look thru my follows and followers -- some i expect will be hidden since some servers are delinked from others but others u shd just be able to follow there and then via the + sign? anyway u will recognise some ppl there

mastodon online is probably experiencing a surge r/n

Yeah I can't see anyone you are following lol.

try "browse more on the original profile" (it updates quicker but doesn't have a + sign so you have to click thru to each one)

I found this works best in a browser, on my PC in Chrome I right-click their user name and select open in new tab. Doesn't work so well to follow the link in the main tab.

it has real caractacus potts breakfast-making machine vibes, all gimcrack machinery clicking whirring and stiffly and jerkily undertaking its tasks in the background

eventually the boiled egg rolls down onto yr plate or the floor

So here's a tip -- if you install this app on Twitter to review your account:

https://pruvisto.org/debirdify/

You can check who you're following and see if they have a Mastodon account based on their own settings. Was able to find a slew of people that way. (I grant you might be leery of third-party apps on Twitter at this point but this seemed like the easiest blunt force method and I'll likely uninstall it now that I've used it.)

this is very helpful!

This entire thread should be posted to the backward tech innovations thread.

I'm so confused.

I seem to have signed up for something Irish? mastodon.ie?

Talk to me like I'm a child: Is there one of these servers where everyone is going so that it can be a free-for-all like Twitter and not everyone grouped into chosen silos? Or is it actually *good* to have to choose a silo for a reason I don't understand?

Also, can I change servers if I want to? And keep my username?

Every "let me explain Mastodon" tweet just leaves me more confused and less interested in trying it out.

it turns out it does not matter which server you use to sign up.

discoverability of other accounts is hard though if you are not on a bigger server, I guess. you basically need to know the name of an account you want to follow.

Every "let me explain Mastodon" tweet just leaves me more confused and less interested in trying it out.

― a superficial sheeb of intelligence (jon /via/ chi 2.0),

what if Ezra Klein wrote an explainer

xp

my workaround for this is looking at who other people are following

It's easy to get lost in the whole decentralized/fediverse rhetoric and there are certain unavoidable elements that do result from that but from dipping my toes in the water on Friday at this point I have a slew of familiar names in my feed and because it's not an overwhelming crush of posts and reblogs (yet, obv.) I can treat it as less of a firehose, and the basic functionality is that of Twitter. *shrug* Works for me? My FB presence is private and I can have more general rambly discussions there, same with IG in terms of the low key use I have for it, so this addresses that aspect of things and allows me to post shorter public thoughts instead of in the venue I was using up until now.

Searching for hashtags and things seems to not work , or there really are not many people using this

I do find I can locate people now if I have their full address.
Hard to knwo what is a shortcoming of mastodon and what is just broken at the moment

lol this thread is more siloed than mastodon

yeah, there are degrees of social media experiences:

ilxor/message boards- for like-minded enthusiasts to enthuse and fight

Facebook-- place to post photos and explain your jokes to your relatives

Twitter-- place to watch a bunch of famous and non-famous people embarrass themselves in front of millions

Mastodon-- who knows? Seems somewhere between message board and Facebook at this point, but in the future could be cool kid twitter or cool kid Parler

maybe mastodon will just be something to add and keep the rest until our cup runneth over with social media

mastodon is where we can practice playing nice so we get the respite to be more horrible everywhere else

Very pro this kind of thing on principle as the original reason I had for checking out of twitter a few years ago was visceral disgust over whatever tiny role I'd played as a longtime user (since the SMS days!) in building up the heft of this thing to the point where it was an appealing lever for people looking to (for example) commit securities fraud or incite a nuclear conflict. Granted, that's just a particularly absurd synecdoche for the broader gnarl of modernity but at least in this case I felt like I could make a choice to opt out.

In practice I'd be really surprised if mastodon represents a stable/viable paradigm. I'm getting the vibe that it's stuck in an awkward middle ground between the goal of delivering something that looks/feels/acts like a familiar web 2.0 platform and the logistical realities of a ton of different people maintaining infrastructure on an ad hoc basis.

But it's worth a good faith effort and we'll have some laughs regardless of how it shakes out: https://mastodon.sdf.org@catniptwinz

Btw was never on sdf but was delighted to see that they had a mastodon instance.

The reason I never used twitter was because it was a "here have all the posts in the world mauahahaha" sort of firehose as Ned says. It was just too bloody much, and I have less than 100 followers/following. But they all retweet endlessly, so I see everything except the people I actually hear from?

But then I realise that, unlike 10 years or more ago, I Do Not Care to blather on about my life to an unseen online audience anymore. So I dunno what the point of any of this is now uuuughhhh *drowns self*.

Well you could create an account, construct a feed of those you want to read and not post otherwise. No reason it can't be used that way!

followed ya moodles

there's kind of a giddy excitement that's not unrelated to how drab the experience is at first. oh how cool! I'm seeing posts from one person I know, and literally nobody else! ~no static at all~

fantastic, I may just post someday

this isn't so bad. seems to be working for the most part. https://ravenation.club/@manthonyslc

ahhh fuggit.

https://masthead.social/@trayce

Went for the journo/writers/bloggers instance - it has loads of ppl, is accepting signups and is the kinda ppl I'd likely want to see.

i'm getting the impression that ravenation.club was started by louis tomlinson?

watching federated is like staring at oncoming traffic on the freeway

some euro thing called #fotomontag is fun, also #catsofmastodon

Are different instances faster/slower? I notice a couple of you are on ravenation and that seems to take forverrrrrr to load up?

Also my apologies but I dont know who Catnip Twinz is haha sorry man :(

I haven't noticed any slowness, but it could have to do with your location vs the location of the server?

Maybe yeah.

I think I'm just gonna stick with ilx and the Instagram account I check once a week

ravenation was being really slow for me there for a while

xp All good, no worries

captnip twinz seems like an interesting person and i welcome their presence in my feed.

mastodon is an apt name for this because it's slow like the ice age !! haha

@catnip: I dont mean I wont follow you! I just dont recognise your handle, are you an ILM person or have u changed handles and I'm just slow.

ravenation.club heating da fuq up

Camila_Cabello
Camila Cabello :verified: @Camila_Cabello

When I was in high school I loved doing group work.

Harry Styles :verified: @Harry__Styles

The awkward moment when i reply to a fake @Louis_Tomlinson Haha!

of course i know these are fake.

reader: for a minute he thought they were real.

xxp Ha okay, sorry for any confusion.

Longtime ILM reader, brief stint posting last year when I thought 'if I value "olde internet" spaces like this (hopefully not an objectionable characterization?) I should probably participate more in the interest of keeping them going' before a new job unexpectedly burned up every last shred of mental energy that I had for participating in this or anything else and I dropped back off the face of the earth for a minute. Not at all someone you "should recognize" in a Cheers sense!

Like (I imagine) everyone else in this thread I'm trying to get my head around Mastodon, have been following people thinking "oh yeah I remember Twitter circa 2007; you just had to follow a bunch of people who were probably going to be fun to talk about records with and let things take their course from there". After a few follows, thought "I should probably say hi in the thread too, so people know what's up."

Anyway, feel free to follow or not; I have no idea whether I'll be all that engaged with Mastodon or in what way, and I absolutely 1000% get being like "don't know who this is, not worth it" in response to a follow request on the internet of 2022.

sort of feel like it makes a difference what server you join. like i could enjoy watching the 'local' feed if it wasn't a bunch of louis tomlinson fans posting about how the louis tomlinson account is fake??

i hope some high value twitter people start using it. though maybe it's more interesting as a 'start fresh' kind of deal and see where it goes, maybe nowhere, maybe something small and interesting.

the thing that will keep me coming back for a while is that it's open source and not for profit, that is naturally appealing to me even if it keeps the content limited and quiet.

Yes its not cavalier like days of yore, I agree there.

Mastodon is like a nice quiet visit to the library - nod your head politely to people you know, maybe the odd whispered conversation here or there - and then off again into the big bad world.

http://philip.greenspun.com/images/pcd0133/monument-valley-goats-40.1.jpg

RETVRN