Every day, I have someone in my mentions who's upset because they read *one* post in a thread, and make big conclusions.

Then I ask them, "Have you read the whole thread?"

Well, have you?

Why I write Mastodon threads instead of blog posts:

1. It's how my brain thinks -- not everything comes to me at once
2. It allows me to make individual points in a larger conversation
3. I find myself adding to threads as commenters bring up additional points
4. In my real life, I talk to myself

I've tried to write really long posts on my Pleroma instance. But it instead ends up like a Mastodon thread anyway. 5,000 characters, and I only use 300 of them in the initial post.

And then I think about something else, and so I add to the initial post.

Kind of like what I'm doing right now.

The other thing is, I've spent 3 years on Mastodon literally talking to myself and then responding to myself.

Think I'm going to stop that now that I have 9,400 accounts who are seeing me talk to myself? Nope.

I am my biggest fan on Mastodon.

It took an entire year of me posting on Mastodon before anyone replied to anything that I wrote.

And the first person who actually replied to me was a camgirl who was fishing for clients.

(Not saying being a camgirl is "bad" -- just explaining what it was like on Mastodon back in 2018.)

On my first year on Mastodon, I didn't go out of my way to talk to anyone because it seemed like I was completely different from everyone else.

For example, I never put my pronouns in my bio because I hate being defined by gender.

And no, I'm not non-binary either—I really don't like being defined.

Also: I don't mind if other people define me. For example, my daughter calls me "dad".

It's important to her that I be "dad".

I'm not going to take "dad" away from her.

I just don't like internally defining myself.

Anyway, back in 2018, it seemed everyone on Mastodon was super into defining everyone and anything.

As wordy as I tend to get, I simply don't think words should have the ultimate power of providing definition.

I think there's a case for expression beyond text.

Ha. Someone asked me what my gender is.

I give you a non-answer.

And again, a non-answer does not mean non-binary: it means a non-answer.

I'm not going to give you the license to define me.

Instead, you're going to have to get comfortable with the notion that I, a consciousness, inhabit this space.