I remember Twitter when quote retweets were manual, and I felt like I had to really force myself to scan headlines for something to talk about and then bring that to Twitter if I wanted a presence there.

I did it, bc I wanted to use Twitter for my organizing, but it was so unfun.

What really got me to the point of *enjoying* Twitter was the back-and-forth that quote-retweets allowed.

It lets you very easily reply in a way that ropes your own community into the conversation without cutting off the OP or appearing to plagiarize them.

So now I have "post to mastodon" on my weekday daily to do list, but it still feels like a chore.

Part of it is that I haven't built a ton of community here yet.

But part of it is also that I think the lack of this functionality makes that community-building process less intuitive and more difficult.

And I know I'm going to get a lot of "love it or leave it" comments, this stuff always does.

But I say it *because* I want Mastodon to succeed. I really want this to be The Next Place after Twitter.

We so desperately need a popular public digital forum that isn't corporate-run or hate-riddled.