Two Years Before The Mastodon

Two years ago I joined Mastodon. After Facebook, this is my second attempt at social media. So, 2,852 posts, and counting, in, how have I found it? Has any of what I thought might happen, happened?

The good news is, it's looks like I've become OK at posting random observations into the void, and occasionally getting interesting replies. The most interaction has been around music, and I've found a few excellent people to get new tips from, and share music with. The results of these exchanges are very obvious in my most recent newly heard lists, and is something that's made me very happy, because locally in real life, I don't have many people near by to discuss music with.

Other than music, most chats have been around specific topics, and I've done a lot of posting around the #Parenting hashtag, where there's been mutual commiseration and reassurance that everyone else is simultaneously having a terrible, and great, time. I've also had a few nice interactions around Emacs, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and my home lab experiments.

Some interactions have also led to smaller private chats, which is lovely and feels much more like real-life friendships, as you're moving beyond talking about a specific topic, but talking with someone because of who they are, which to me is one of the key signs of a growing friendship.

One thing I was unsure of in the beginning was what to post. Generally I've gone with: if something interesting happens that you'd comment on to a friend sat next to you, then it's probably worth posting. It doesn't have to be very insightful, funny or profound. Probably no-one will care; but someone might also find it interesting, or later see it in your feed and with a few posts get a general impression of you, and decide to say hello or reply. I've tried hard not to over-think it. (Being able to edit posts afterwards, to correct my inevitable grammar and spelling mistakes is also a huge blessing.)

My biggest surprise has been how much I've enjoyed the local timeline and community on the social.lol server I'm on. Without getting into the details; your Mastodon account exists on a specific server with other accounts, which I think of as being like the town you live in. Some are bigger, some a smaller, and you can easily see everything that's happening in your town. You can communicate with anyone on Mastodon¹, but to communicate with people on other servers, your posts get forwarded on to their server; and if you follow them, your server collects and shows their posts to you. Many servers are based around particular interests, like BSDs, metal music or Wales. There is also the largest, all purpose, server Mastodon.social, run by the same people who develop the Mastodon application, and I assume being there is like living in a cacophonous mega-city.

I'd assumed that I'd mostly be reading post from people and hashtags I explicitly choose to follow, and the local feed would really just be a side show. After all, it's a more random collection of people, and it's not a server with a specific interest we all share. It turns out the social.lol server is a lovely place, and by being a less interest based group, means what is talked about tends to be more diverse than if I just read topics and people I'd decided to follow because there was an obvious overlap of hobbies.

Social.lol is part of the world of omg.lol, a collection of web services, but really the only part I use. It is a paid for server, which I think is a little unusual, and does skew the demographics on there. They do offer sponsorships for those who can't afford it. I'm hoping that means it's more sustainable in the long term. Most servers run on donations (so please donate if you can!), and are often labours of love.

So while my home feed consists of people and hashtags I've specifically chosen to follow, social.lol is this little town I'm from, where it's a slightly more unsorted collection of people (it still leans heavily towards people technical enough to care about having such web services, and knowing what Mastodon even is). Opening the timeline there shows familiar faces and updates on all kinds of topics - everything and nothing - in a way that's very nice, like seeing familiar faces when walking around the neighbourhood, and I'm not the only one who thinks that.

Mastodon, and social.lol, do have a very US heavy population, and so that shapes a huge amount of what I see, but this is generally true if you're mostly browsing the web in English. I do see a fair amount of German, some Dutch and French, occasionally even some Malay or Japanese. I don't expect to read much in languages I don't understand, but I've tried to make sure I follow British, German and other non-US people to try and hear more about what's happening in parts of the World that the English speaking media isn't obsessing over.

This brings me to one of the downsides of any social media: doom scrolling. Even with filters and careful following it's almost impossible to avoid. I try to keep the amount of current affairs in my feed low, and there's probably a healthier mix of information on Mastodon than checking if the BBC News site has updated again with something new and awful, but humans are naturally drawn to the bad news.

It's a balance I've still not found. I want to remain informed about what's happening, but also not be driven to despair, especially on topics over which I have no way of influencing, like US politics. Without some nebulous central algorithm that you know is mostly working against you, you do have more power over what you see - but what should you see? Here I feel very conflicted; some parts guilt about what I'm ignoring, fear about what's happening and the need to have some distraction that doesn't instantly make my stomach churn with anxiety.

I don't know what the right answer is. I believe that posting loudly on social media isn't a substitute for action in the real World - but talking and connecting are important, and that's often the spark people need. To make them feel less alone, and that there is someone out there who would understand and support them. You can't do that on platforms that are hostile to you.

Even without an algorithm optimised for keeping you hooked to your screen, Mastodon does eat quite some time, and it's taken a lot of that from my RSS feed. I now see and find interesting posts and articles that way (in some cases the same posts). It's also easier to dip into than the longer articles I have in my RSS feed, and while raising young children, I often don't get more than a few minutes peace, so it's good for dipping in and out.

I'm also trying to make peace with the fact that I'm not going to see everything. I follow a little over 500 people, and that, along with the local feed, already produces more than I can keep up with. I've created a few lists of those accounts where I want to make sure I see most things, but there's a lot I'm still missing, and it's quite possible for me to have a few days where I don't really look, and then clearly things go by without me knowing anything about it.

So after two years, do I think I'll stick around? For now, yes. I like some of the contacts I've made, the general buzz of a community, and the potential of getting to know new interesting people. Hopefully I'll also figure out how to balance the doom scrolling with still knowing some of what's happening in the world, even those things not making the headlines - and a lot of the time that's better news.