A Note on Mastodon

Note: This is not an instructional post. For that, I recommend fedi.tips.

I’m 1 week into Mastodon, and so far I kind of love it!

Within moments of joining a server (so quick, I thought it was automated), I was playfully greeted by the admin with lyrics from the song I chose as my username (I joined an anime-themed server – the song is from Cowboy Bebop). After a few more minutes, someone else chimed in with the next verse. I’d been a user for 40 minutes and already saw how much of a community it could be.

That said, it’s still a platform for people to post whatever they want into the void, so there’s a lot of posting for the sake of posting, with no real interaction at all. But something about having a local server makes it feel like more of a community and seems to spur more interaction, on average, with people you come to know. It’s also fun! There are #HashtagGames and silliness abound.

It’s time to come to terms with the fact that Twitter is just not the same thing it was.

Like many folks, it seems, my forray into Mastodon began as an experiment to see if it could replace the chirpy bird in my life. Honestly, it’s not the same. Maybe some of the larger, more popular servers will become more like that with time, but for now, it feels more like a cross between a good forum, the early days of Twitter, some elements of Discord, etc. Importantly, though, I don’t really feel a sense of anything missing by this not being a one-for-one Twitter replacement.

If anything is missing, it’s the awful onslaught of ads and highly targeted content that makes up so much of what Twitter is. Not to mention the (now perfectly sanctioned) growth of hatred and other harmful content. Good riddance.

For the first time in a while, it feels good to be part of the internet again.

Are you on Mastodon? Come find me and follow. I’ll follow back. I’m @askDNA@urusai.social