Thinking more people are going to engage with you on mainstream social media “because everyone’s there” is like thinking people at a stadium concert are there to listen to you. It‘s only true if you’re one of the ones on stage. Not so much when you’re huddled in the nosebleeds.
Forget the numbers. Forget about “going viral” (leave it to the psychopaths in Silicon Valley to make virus-like behaviour aspirational). Embrace the joy of interacting with one another on a human scale.
@aral I totally hear what you're saying and agree wholeheartedly.
But as I reeducate my social media reflexes here, and revaluating my engagement on Twitter - I'm wondering whether it would be better to export new behaviours back into that world rather than turn away? Lots of internal conflict about this concept...
@yukinosaru I mean, by all means if you want to infiltrate/sabotage that system, go for it. Sabotage is the only legitimate means of changing such a system from the inside (but I’m not necessarily convinced of its long-term effectiveness).
Personally, I prefer to create. To work on alternatives. To try and help build the kind of world I want to live in.
I’ve railed against that system long enough and let me tell you, it’s a soul-destroying affair. I still call it out but my focus is creating.
@aral I'm not really advocating for sabotage, I've muddled two thought streams there. My main point is that I do find that there is still value there and I'm questioning whether and how my own behaviour has contributed to the toxicity and how I might do things differently.
I too believe that creation is the better choice and I've also tried to build and live the world that I want to see, although in a different domain. Interrogating my own instincts and behaviours is part of my growth journey.
Wow the Give Up religion is strong with this one.
Like speeches by women telling women not to make speeches, I wonder how the Give Up caucus gets out of bed long enough to tell others to give up.
I think it might be the money.
At 4am in NYC I wake up to catch the early bus. When I'd look at twitter at that hour it was totally filled with all these students and scientists and nurses from Nigeria-- They are already at work and in class and taking about the news, papers, jokes. And I made friends that way too. I learned new things.
That's the power of a network with 100s of millions of people.
@futurebird @aral yeah I have Twitter connections in Nigeria, iNaturalist connections in Australia, and Facebook connections in remote areas of Colombia and Peru. LinkedIn has let me connect with corporate leaders in Chile and El Salvador. Corporate social media is bad on many ways but it's also a miracle.
Maybe your job doesn't require constant global outreach. But don't preach at me about thinking small.
@stevenbodzin No one’s preaching at you, Steven. You’re doing the online equivalent of coming into my home (my mentions, on my instance) and telling me to shut up.
I can speak my mind on my own fediverse instance as I like. If you don’t want to hear what I’ve got to say, don’t follow me, mute me, block me, or block my whole instance if that makes you feel better.
The day I come into your mentions and start telling you what you can or cannot do then you can accuse me of preaching.
The main purpose of the fediverse is decentralization and unentanglement of paying a service with your self-determination.
It's the commitment to a standard protocol like SMS or E-Mail - rather than centralized enclosures not just an entire country but the world has to rely on.
The fediverse doesn't guarantee you quality of life or security but ensures and enables control, competition, and flexibility with the right balance of social accountability.
@PensiveTM @yukinosaru @aral
Nothing stands against an instance offering additional, payed analytical and processing services, though.
The key is you can leave without giving up on your circle and other instances can block them if they misbehave.
I recently joined Mastodon, and I found it jarring that it has very few discoverability features. So I’ve built this little tool to help build connections with people: https://followgraph.vercel.app/ Check it out! #mastodon #discovery #discoverability #fediverse
The "engage with influencers" mindset has led to a copious flow of gratuitous pandering. I gave up on the other sites because it was too painful to watch.
@Irisherself I was as happy with a handful here in 2016. (And equally fine with leaving the 42K+ “followers” I had when I closed the hell-site account.) The number here ballooned up quite a bit during the migration. Was far less for the majority of the last six years.
In fact, I’d be very happy if Mastodon hid the numbers altogether. I think that would be a positive. I’ve already hidden by follower/following lists but I can’t hide the numbers.
Amen. Don’t feed the #narcissism
@aral Somehow this rings true with my impression of Native American values before the Eurasians came.
They abandoned empire after empire to live small. Each time they improved their administrative & power systems of power a bit so the next empire wouldn’t be able to create so much warfare or amass as much power.
(This was achieved through legends, tales of the birth of the people, and art, as they didn’t write.)
@aral Also though. We need to still acknowledge the bad actors are touching at something primal in the human psyche.
The will to power will always be there.
But if that will has creative outlets that do good instead of bad, then we can be more secure as community.
Leaders being able to use their power to amass more power is the critical point. Mechanisms to throttle this are paramount.
Ceremonial power is another option. Reduce the actual power, but let them have the illusion
This was my approach on Twitter when I was on it...engage one on one with people. Trying to convey an idea to just one person. It got hard when you kept realizing I could just be talking to a bot...
@aral Fitting that this post should be popular :)
I have nearly 10k followers between Facebook & Twitter, but finding it rewarding to discover my tribe, one by one (only 80 friends, here, so far)
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