@Gargron The Wil Wheaton drama coupled with the hoards of John McCain "shitposting" (honestly some of the rudest messages I've ever seen on social media) really turned me off from the so-called good qualities this website offered. Corporatized Twitter sucks, but mob-fueled digitized verbal lynching is not a proper or coherent rival. Maybe social media in general needs revitalization and not half-hearted attempts at becoming the "next big thing" in the short attention span of the internet.

@Gargron To summarize, the site has evolved from a good-natured alternative into a "you're either with us or fuck you" social club that seems to exist solely to make fun of those who don't agree, constantly bring up "the problems" with "birdsite", and circlejerk pointless information for the rip-off "toots" that rarely exist as the site is split off into different sub-communities that do not seem to interact - yet all serve the same purpose.

@Gargron Also - basic sociology - when too many categories are created, those categories become worthless. The overuse of content warnings on this site break the overall flow of the timelines and creates a terrible situation where "if everything is content warning'd, then nothing is content warning'd at all."

@josephkaminski I'm not sure why you're tagging me personally like I am in control of every single being on this platform, but all of your complaints are solved by following different people. Just find yourself people who love McCain and hate content warnings. Probably on a less left-leaning server than mine.

@Gargron and there doesn't need to be a political divide between the McCain thing. I don't like him either, but the general consensus here was more toxic and hateful than any other platform I'm on. That's the problem, not the "following" concern. I apologize if I'm coming off as hateful, but criticism is important.

@josephkaminski @Gargron mastodon.social (m.soc) happens to also be where people who got account suspensions on Twitter and are fed up for that particular reason wind up--because it's the top hit on Google. So invariably you'll discover that includes a fair share of shitposters. It's not reflective of m.soc's userbase--it's just that shitposters tend to be loud and annoying and post frequently.

@trayofbees Ironically, having a differing complaint/breaking from the hive mind is the most "action" I've seen here in terms of communication. See the apology I just posted to Eugen.

@josephkaminski You can take one of two tracks if you're not a low-effort liberal who is mostly into social media for communism memes and talking about your butthole---avoid poli (because really, nobody ever converts someone's opinion about anything poli on social media), or you find an instance (liberdon? qoto maybe?) where more intellectual discourse is encouraged

@josephkaminski There's a debate about instance-only conversations (which isn't possible right now) but would be the equivalent of sever-only channels where the messages don't get federated, so people can self-sort to instances where they feel more at home

@josephkaminski You just cannot have a 20-something far left person with a 40 year old centrist on the same social media feed together and expect that to ever happen and not end in tears, no matter how much both people promise they'll be nice.

@josephkaminski btw your account on any mastodon instance already comes with powerful filtering and domain blocks--you don't need to wait for an admin to use them. You can drop the toots or just hide them (I prefer to always drop them). The toot gets replaced with "filtered" and no buttons to click, so you know the filter's working. We all had to reach for that during the wilw episode

@trayofbees Trust me - I tried the filtering. Every time I added a new one people found a new way to say or spell McCain. McCain turned into McCainposting and then Cainposting and then just nicknames and random words associated with him (ie. Maverick). If I filtered every damn word what would be left? There's none of this word-play association on any other social site I've been apart of.