I’m not actually using twitter, just never got into it, but now that I’m trying out mastodon, idk if I’m just too old now but I don’t… get it. I just can’t seem to engage with anyone, the UI seems confusing and counterintuitive, I don’t seem to have the context to get into this type of website, can someone tell me how I do this?
Any time you have some inane or mundane thought, type it out and hit send, then everyone can read the boring and useless things your brain ejaculates onto the screen. That’s my experience with Twatter, anyway
This would make a great twitter post. ;)
i was half considering boosting it outside lemmy out of context tbf
I mean, that’s kind of what I was looking for as bad as that may sound, sometimes I just wanna spout out my shower thoughts without posting it to the showerthought community and getting bitched at that it’s not “shower thought” enough
Then shitter is perfect for you
Heel boy
You perfectly summed up twitter
I always tell people that mastodon is more like a garden than a grocery store.
It will not automatically start serving you any content because there is no algorithm.
If you want to begin to cultivate your feed, you should search for topics that interest you, especially using the hashtags. Post an introduction with hashtags (there are guides for doing this online). Then start following everyone who posts something interesting. If you find out later that they are not posting the type of material you are interested in then you can always unfollow in there no hard feelings. You can also follow or mute individual hashtags.
Most importantly, Mastodon is actually a social network. Reply to the people you follow, like and boost, boost, boost! Plan to be a participant in the conversation.
also remember just like how lemmy has it’s kbin, mastodon has it’s interoperable alternatives.
i bet a fair bit of the complaints i hear from people on lemmy (low character count, wanting to follow topics instead of people) would be solved by trying out a misskey fork such as firefish, iceshrimp or sharkey.
i don’t think there’s any instance out there with a char count lower than 1000, and antennas are really good (why limit youself to following a single hashtag when you can follow any number of arbitrary keywords?) if you’re in a well federated instance (provided you’re ok with them not feeding into your home feed and them not being retroactive (so after you set up an antenna you’ll need to wait for new posts to filter in))
they aren’t as polished as mastodon since mastodon kinda ate everyone’s lunch in terms of developer attention (and upstream misskey is an almost one-man-show mess developed entirely in japanese which is why everyone prefers to fork instead of collaborating), but they’ve been getting really good.
just avoid flagship instances (> 1k active users) for the time being. scaling is still something not many of them have solved just yet
With regards to Mastodon, there’s no algorithm. So you’ll need to be using the hashtag search function to really find the sort of people you’re interested in communicating with.
This. Learn how the site search works and search for tage before posting to make sure you’ll be in the same feed.
@[email protected] (enter that into your search box on Mastodon) has an excellent and curated collection of tips, resources, groups and people to suggest to you to get started.
I’m admittedly not the best person to talk about it, since I don’t really get the appeal, but in general, Twitter/Mastrodon is for following people you care about. Its largely about people rather than content or discussion, similar to a list of blogs rather than a forum. To find content you can look at tags (mostly to get a general pulse on the topic) but will mostly want to find people to follow, who’s content you want to read, such as friends, politicians, celeberties, or influential figures in your field.
Unfortunately personally, I found no one on Mastrodon that consistantly interested me (beyond a couple bots copying Twitter feeds) but hopefully you’ll have more luck.
That’s what I was going to ask. I’ve never been able to figure out Twitter either, but my best guess is you need to follow people rather than topics, and I’m generally not interested in that
I haven’t really used Twitter much but Mastodon does allow you to follow tags, which is basically what you have in mind
It was pretty easy to use back in the day when it was just posts from people you follow in reverse order. I stopped using it when they implemented the algorithm.
you need to find a circle of mutuals that you like in order for it to start being fun
Platforms like this are mostly sort of for self centered people, or those willing to follow self centered people. It’s why I couldn’t get into Twitter back in the day either. I just don’t have anything to say about my life, and I’m not interested in the life of others. And for things like news aggregation or specific topics there’s just other platforms that fit better for that task, like our infamous Reddit or its fediverse alternatives like Kbin & Lemmy.
I’ve never been able to use Twitter or mastodon. It’s just not for me ig
it’s a pretty simple app, what are you having issues with?
OP isn’t having a technical problem, they’re just not seeing the point of why someone would want to use it, what is it good for
How I use it is probably different to how other people use it; I use it to report incidents of public/local interest, and to find out about such things. That’s it. Works really well for that.
I use Twitter exclusively to follow tech YouTubers and eSports players
I just use it as a place to vent my thoughts, feelings, or frustrations in the moment. I think of it as “screaming into the void” and over time you collect a small circle of people you regularly interact with. Don’t think about it too deeply because it’s not deep
It’s just microblogging. Just post about things that you’re interested in, pop in some relevant hashtags and then people will engage with you.
I used to be in a large group centered around the jam band scene. Most of those have moved on though.
