Author: europlus

Note: While I recently dealt with my flight from Twitter, I’ve had some more time to think about my relative experiences, some of my motivations and changing expectations, and just where it is I feel I am heading. While originally meant as a series of Mastodon posts, it seemed to quickly outgrow that mode of expression. This topic remains, and may always remain, a work in progress for me…

I’ve been full time on Mastodon (here) since the deal closed, but had preempted that by registering soon after the deal was announced so I could start to settle in, and I fired up my own instance not long after that.

I couldn’t abide staying on Twitter (there) long term, even if the deal fell through, simply because of who the shareholders and board were choosing to approve the sale to.

Like many, I’d built a comfortable set of follows and followers on Twitter, and knew it would take a while to settle in here. I honestly resented the board for recommending the deal, although from a fiduciary standpoint I understood why they would pursue it given the tanking tech stock market.

While there are many I follow here (or am followed by here) who were on Twitter, it’s certainly not a complete overlap. But it’s certainly at least as interesting a mix!

I’m not sure if tools like Movetodon and Fedifinder will capture many more of the Twitter accounts I followed in their new home here if Twitter continues its URL ban. I may need to rely on others finding me while my Mastodon-referring Twitter account remains active, or just through mutual follows or serendipity.

As per my earlier Mastodon post, I struggle with potential rationalisations of people I followed on Twitter who it baffles me have not yet come over (or at least left Twitter).

I know for many disadvantaged folks the community there can be a literal lifeline (and I hope that can become the case here), but for those not facing those challenges, ignoring (or abetting) the cesspit that it’s becoming just seems like an especially wilful sort of ignorance to me.

And there’s certainly no point staying to try and fight the good fight – that fight is so heavily weighted in the opposition’s favour it’s no fight at all.

The “Mastodon’s too hard“ argument doesn’t cut it for me – Twitter was hard once (I can’t tell you how difficult it was for me to learn direct messages in the early days, or how to effectively use the . tagging method!), Facebook has a learning curve…in fact MySpace, Insta, Yahoo Groups – they all had learning curves!

For some, I think it’s a handy and especially wilful sort of laziness to just stay where they are. As in physical reality, inertia can be pretty powerful.

I’d originally intended on leaving my accounts there as zombie accounts to prevent my handles being overtaken, but that is seeming less and less useful as time goes by. If I’m never going back (and I am never going back), what do I care if my handles are snaffled? They weren’t even my first choices!

But I haven’t decided between just deactivating or deleting tweets then deactivating (would be interested in pros and cons). And I do want some more time for my inactive accounts to grab a few more of my contacts from there.

As it started to be the case on Twitter, I find I’m struggling to keep up with my timeline, but I think a not insignificant part of that is discussion about Twitter, so I’m going to filter relevant terms and obfuscations to improve the signal-to-Musk ratio. I don’t quite feel ready to unfollow anyone at the moment, so I’m hoping that brings things back under control. At least I’m not suffering the sort of low level anxiety I did on Twitter at not keeping up.

At least I can check in on my instance’s Federated Timeline every now and then in case I feel I’d like an update on Twitter goings on – I do still care about what’s happening over there, but I need some clearly delineated space, too.I

I very quickly settled on a strict rule that I don’t cross-post from my main account – Twitter gets nothing from me now.

And while I intended to extend this to phasing out posting to the Applesauce Fluxes Twitter account, I cut that offf early after one of the many egregious decisions Musk made (I think it was unbanning Trump, but it’s honestly all becoming a blur now).

I’ve seen so many interesting introduction posts here, not all overlapping my interests, but I’ve made an effort to boost as many as I remember to in case they overlap my followers’ interests. Now is the time for community building, and this seems a low effort contribution I can make towards that goal.

I still have to get in the habit of using more #HashTags (don’t forget to #CamelCase!), but I think I’ve been remembering image descriptions/alt-text pretty reliably – CamelCasing hashtags and adding image descriptions are low cost (especially for what my time is worth!) ways of supporting accessibility here which I endorse wholeheartedly.

I know hashtags improve discoverability, but I’m not on a “get followed” drive, which is why I may have a lower impetus to actually utilise them more (for now).

I think that’s pretty well it at this stage. I’m enjoying Mastodon, recommend it wholeheartedly, and am still considering other fediverse usages. But for now, I really want to bed Mastodon down and feel as comfortable as I can.

P.S. Oh, and enough with the “John Mastodon” stuff already – I personally think owning that RWNJ would have been better by saying he either misread #JoanMastodon as #JohnMastodon, or, in typical RWNJ fashion, downplayed any role Joan Mastodon, John’s partner/mother/predecessor/whatever, had in establishing Mastodon the social network. And now I want to subvert the subversion, but it’s probably too late…