Hey folk - making fun of people who find Mastodon difficult and claiming that it "weeds out anyone too stupid to use Mastodon" or "they're too attached to Twitter so their opinion of Mastodon is suspicious" is really not the move.

Firstly, this was the kind of rhetoric that got me infamously racially harassed my first few hours on Mastodon back when it was super new.

Mainly though - it's unneeded superiority, it's ignoring very valid accessibility concerns, and it's just straight up exclusionary.

@creatrixtiara I mentioned it elsewhere, but it bears repeating: The WELL circa 1985 ran on PicoSpan over Unix: command line esoterica squared. The knowledgeable people in the young community helped newbies get on board and in retrospect, that episode of mutual aid was fundamental to the growth of community. (Which is not to say that Mastodon's onboarding is too perfect for improvement.)
@hrheingold @creatrixtiara
The WELL was a welcoming and helpful community. I wonder if that is possible in this era? I credit the founders of the WELL for encouraging good behavior.
@SteveLamont @hrheingold ooo I don't think I know about the WELL, could you tell me more?