@NatalieKelda

> why are @'s so damn long?!

because this place is actually a huge mesh of small Twitters that are connected to each other, so people from one small Twitter can talk to people on another small Twitter. the part after the second @ tells you what small Twitter they're from - similar to how second parts of people's email addresses work!

@NatalieKelda Find friends by searching/following hashtags.

Some good ones to start with: #writersOfMastodon #writingCommunity #writersLife #amWriting #amEditing #writer (not an exhaustive list)

@NatalieKelda

Hey there, welcome! 👋 Nice to see more writers on here!

If you need help getting started have a look at https://fedi.tips, it answers common beginners' questions.

The @s are as long as email addresses because the network on here has a similar structure to email. Instead of one massive site owned by Musk, this place is thousands of smaller sites connected together. The extra long @ addresses tell the system which site a server signed up on, so they can connect.