So I’ve tried Mastodon a couple times now and so far it simply doesn’t click. Which is fine, it doesn’t have to. But I’m thinking maybe I just don’t know how to navigate the platform yet. Is it as interactive as Lemmy or is everyone kinda shouting into the void? Is there an equivalent to communities? If not, how do you find stuff you care about? And is reblogging the equivalent to upvoting? Is it like a like and share in one? Do they have memes there or what’s the range of content? How does it compare to bluesky? I have used bluesky but the tone there is kinda shallow imo, rarely any meaningful interactions. I’m Gen Z so maybe I’m just not the target audience? But Idk how much that even matters.
It is similar to Bluesky, yes. They both got a lot of inspiration from Twitter (before Musk turned it to shit/X).
And I would say that the discussions are more shallow than on Lemmy. Even though Mastodon has a higher character limit than Twitter and many Mastodon instances effectively remove the character limit, it’s still fundamentally a platform for shortform interactions. Infodumping is rarely seen, because you need to create a silly number of chained messages.
On the flipside, though, you get to know people. I do appreciate the time I spent on Mastodon, because of that. It’s a very different perspective as not everything is about discussing cold hard facts, but rather also people’s hobbies and struggles and whatnot.
Is it as interactive as Lemmy or is everyone kinda shouting into the void?
I’d say it’s a somewhat different kind of interactivity than Lemmy. Your typical Mastodon user won’t have many followers, but that doesn’t mean you’re “shouting into the void”. Similar to Lemmy, you can comment on (reply to) others’ posts and lots of other people can join in the discussion that way.
Is there an equivalent to communities?
Not really, but you can follow hashtags for whatever topics you’re interested in. Or follow an account for something you’re interested in (e.g.: organizations, weather, hobby news, content creators, etc)
If not, how do you find stuff you care about?
Follow people/organizations/tags that you find interesting and their posts will populate your feed.
And is reblogging the equivalent to upvoting? Is it like a like and share in one?
Not necessarily. Reblogging (“boosting” on Mastodon) is just putting more eyes on someone else’s post by sharing it; it isn’t equivalent to an endorsement per se. You can favorite posts on Mastodon, but I don’t think there’s really an equivalent to a “like” or “upvote” button.
Do they have memes there or what’s the range of content?
The range of content is as wide as anywhere else, memes and all. Can vary from instance to instance, though. (e.g.: code of conduct on mastodon.social may be different from fosstodon.org’s)
How does it compare to bluesky? I have used bluesky but the tone there is kinda shallow imo, rarely any meaningful interactions.
I haven’t used bluesky, so I can’t comment on this one.
