Like, I dunno, something about the advertising needs to change?
A lot of the people in *my* personal life, who've rejected Mastodon, are ex-forum culture rejects. In theory, they should be able to handle this.
Which has lead me to believe the problem is EXPECTATION. They EXPECT it to work like Twitter, they EXPECT to find all their friends who have Mastodon accounts, they EXPECT unified moderation and ToS.
And when they don't get it, they freak out.
Like, it's all fine and dandy to say "well anyone can say mean shit online" - that's true, and if you've been out here for 3 months, you probably already know that policing the fedi is a full time hobby for about 15% of the users on here. (I made that number up.)
But think back to when you first started right? Did you know who anyone was? Did you have any clue who the admins and power users out here were? I certainly didn't and even once I knew, many of them turned out to be dogshit.
The perception, for a newcomer, is that EVERYONE in your mentions MIGHT be "important." And "the fedi" inside their head, is "whoever they've interacted with so far."
So I dunno that telling them to lump it works. If they UNDERSTOOD it worked like IRC or interconnected forums with separate moderation staffs (see Reddit) then the expectations MIGHT be different.
But they don't. They think it's like Twitter.
@AnarchoNinaWrites """The perception, for a newcomer, is that EVERYONE in your mentions MIGHT be "important"."""
I find this so funny because I've been the opposite and keep being surprised every single time I find out someone is actually well-known for something they've done. Idk, I've mostly been in small niche spaces, so I am just used to treating everyone as being as unimportant as myself xD
Tbh I think that's a lot healthier though. We should be on even footing. It's also a lot more fun when I later find out I had a fun little chat with someone who was a bigshot. Or funnier yet, when I get followed by some bigshot who think I'm just as much of a bigshot as them because I treat them like anyone else xD
AnarchoNinaWrites
Reina 