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I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

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Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#81

Post by CM30 »

bee_rider wrote: post #49
CM30 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I supect it might be due to differing expectations as to what social media conversations are. I think those who weren't super active on forums and other old school chat systems think of them as closer to a chat between friends in a bar than between randoms on the street, and struggle to handle the idea that anyone in the world can reply at any point. But that's kinda the thing. As you said, the whole 'mess…

It depends on the “old school forum” I think. Most phpbb style forums had limited populations, so they were more like chats with your friends at a bar; people come and go, but if you are a regular, there are some familiar faces, and you will likely be engaging with the same people in the short term, so being incredibly rude is counter-productive. Really big boards like Something Awful were the ones known for their ru…

I guess there was still an expectation that out of that population, anyone could reply to anyone about seemingly anything remotely relevant. I suspect a lot of people online don't see it like that anymore, and in some cases might even be surprised that anyone is responding to them at all.

The rudeness is definitely the big issue with modern social media though, and as you said, that comes from how enormous these sites/services are now.

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#82

Post by voidr »

alt227 wrote: post #54
beardedwizard wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes an awful lot about a person and what they may or may not need to do. People don't have to learn to like anything, especially online commentary. This thread sounds like a bunch of men attempting to invalidate this woman's feelings.

People are always going to be rude on the internet. It gives people a sense of anonymity which allows them to care less about the feelings of people they are communicating with. There are 3 options to dealing with this. 1. Never go on the internet. 2. Accept that people will be rude, and develop ways to ignore/deal with it rationally. 3. Complain about it, and expect something to change. Looks like the author is choo…

> Why are you bringing sex/gender into this? It has nothing to do with it.

It's easier to victimise yourself than to accept the reality that irrespective of what class you belong to, there will be people who will not like you for what you do, say or how you say it and they will voice their opinions. While there are plenty of isms and ists in the world, everyone gets hate online.

Valid criticisms should be taken onboard, garbage hate should be discarded. If you don't have thick skin but still want to have an online presence: just disable comments or have moderators delete all comments you wouldn't like.

It might also be just me, but I fail to understand why anyone uses Twitter or anything similar, these types of platforms promote trashy conversations in my view.

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#83

Post by bee_rider »

CM30 wrote: post #81
bee_rider wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on the “old school forum” I think. Most phpbb style forums had limited populations, so they were more like chats with your friends at a bar; people come and go, but if you are a regular, there are some familiar faces, and you will likely be engaging with the same people in the short term, so being incredibly rude is counter-productive. Really big boards like Something Awful were the ones known for their ru…

I guess there was still an expectation that out of that population, anyone could reply to anyone about seemingly anything remotely relevant. I suspect a lot of people online don't see it like that anymore, and in some cases might even be surprised that anyone is responding to them at all. The rudeness is definitely the big issue with modern social media though, and as you said, that comes from how enormous these site…

I think another big issue with modern twitter style mostly-one-interaction social media is the lack of a community.

Even the good old forums, I recall, would have people show up and behave more poorly than was acceptable, get banned, and then you could go back to interacting with your online friends. There’s a sense that the angry person who showed up is the misanthrope, so their opinion doesn’t hurt you.

Plus you have more of a model, so-and-so is grumpy and will insult me, but it’s kind of good natured or at least I know how to calibrate their ire.

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#84

Post by CM30 »

bee_rider wrote: post #83
CM30 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess there was still an expectation that out of that population, anyone could reply to anyone about seemingly anything remotely relevant. I suspect a lot of people online don't see it like that anymore, and in some cases might even be surprised that anyone is responding to them at all. The rudeness is definitely the big issue with modern social media though, and as you said, that comes from how enormous these site…

I think another big issue with modern twitter style mostly-one-interaction social media is the lack of a community. Even the good old forums, I recall, would have people show up and behave more poorly than was acceptable, get banned, and then you could go back to interacting with your online friends. There’s a sense that the angry person who showed up is the misanthrope, so their opinion doesn’t hurt you. Plus you ha…

Yeah there's not much of a community on any of these services. Probably in part because there's no shared ground in the way there would be on a forum or what not. If you went to a site about a particular series or video game console or band or whatever, you'd know many people there would share at least one interest, if not many more, and the disagreements would be on fairly neutral matters.

On a large social media service, you not only don't have any shared interests to go off of much of the time, but there are groups and communities on there who actively hate each other and may want the other dead. In a sense, these sites are like a giant high school.

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#85

Post by Kye »

pixxel wrote: post #77
HuwFulcher wrote: post #46

I find that Mastodon has become the mirror-verse version of Twitter/X. I've tried spending time on there but unless if you subscribe to certain political/ideological values then you wont find much to hang around for. On the flip side I find the discourse on X a lot more varied. There are definitely big problems with the types of conversations that happen on X but I have to go out of my way to find them. On Mastodon i…

> unless if you subscribe to certain political/ideological values then you wont find much to hang around for I’ve had success with following people with pre 2015 bio’s. No flags, no politics, no pronouns. Just tell me what hobbies etc. you’re into.

That's an interesting coincidence because I've had success with blocking people who go out of their way to say they're stuck in 2015 when everyone just assumed you were a dude, embrace the politics they were raised with to the point they consider themselves apolitical, and can't stand us queers in their hobbies even though we've been there all along.

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#86

Post by [deleted] »

keikobadthebad wrote: post #3

I did not hear 'reply guy' before joining mastodon. If you're posting short messages with a reply text box, you can expect to get replies, and the replies are going to reflect how your post was received, no matter how it was sent. It works both ways - I replied to a post from an artist really enraged with AI and pointed out it's no different from a human artist seeing art and incorporating it into their style; that r…

[deleted]

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#87

Post by HuwFulcher »

krapp wrote: post #78
HuwFulcher wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not looking for value through political debate and heterodoxy. In fact I'm trying to look for the opposite, I'm glad you seem to have found it! Algorithmic content is a double edged sword. I've found it much easier to find people on X to discuss the non-political content I want. On the other hand it's much harder on Mastodon.

I assumed you were talking about political content because you cited subscription to certain political ideologies as a reason you didn't find the platform useful, and the likelihood of being banned due to "political zeitgeist" as a flaw in the system. I am curious what high quality non-political content you're finding on X and not Mastodon. I'm only still on X because of a few accounts that haven't jumped ship yet, b…

I’m not concerned about myself being banned on Masotodon as I keep away from political subjects. I don’t find the platform useful as the conversations that I’ve been able to find are highly politicised. I guess I need to work better at tuning out the noise on there.

On X I mainly occupy the indie hacker space which is focused on that topic. There are definitely more political conversations that come up but it’s much easier to filter those out.

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#88

Post by lrvick »

ethbr1 wrote: post #45
Almondsetat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allowing any person to comment is the most freedom you can give people. If people are free to comment whatever they want and they choose to publish crap then that's just a commentary on human nature, not the tool.

All scenarios where anyone can comment anything are not equal, though. F.ex. are anonymous comments allowed? To some degree the platform defines the content it generates.

There exist no practical methods to prevent anonymous commentary on the internet.

If you do not accept the potential of being in a car crash, don't get in a car. If you are not accept the potential of strangers saying mean things to you on the internet, don't talk to strangers on the internet.

That is not victim blaming. It is threat modeling.

We can opine about how nice it would be to live in a world where we could keep all dangerous drivers off the road and all mean people off the internet, but we won't see major changes here for another century, so I don't advise waiting on those to live your life.

Re: I'm closing up shop on my Mastodon for the foreseeable future

#89

Post by znpy »

Yotsugi wrote: post #11
znpy wrote: post #4

[flagged]

Is it "cancel culture"? Article reads like author simply can't handle what anyone who is even remotely relevant has to deal with on a daily basis. It's just reality of being known by more than a dozen people in one chatroom on internet. There's a reason why most popular people in the world don't run blogposts or personal emails out in the open. They basically have to hire other people to do it for them via company le…

Yes it’s cancel culture. The rest of your post is mental gymnastics.
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