Mastodawn

For me it’s split between people I knew at university but haven’t seen in decades and people I know and have seen more recently (in the past five years). I think I’m at about three of each.

@c_dan4th 28/30; the other two are someone I only know from an online game (Button Men), and an author (Daniel Keyes Moran).

@irilyth Interesting! I guess that would be another good question of “who do you consider your on-line friends”.

@c_dan4th I feel like social media has always been a way for me to keep in touch with IRL friends, going way back to the LiveJournal days. I didn't join interest groups or follow people who seemed neat, it was all about people I knew (or once in a while, friends of friends). Dreamwidth, Facebook, Twitter, BlueSky, and Mastodon, are (or were) all like that for me. The main category of exception are authors who I like and want to hear about it when they write something new. :^ )

@irilyth I had rules around each of my social medias. FB was only people I knew IRL. Twitter was anyone I’d interacted win in some interesting way. Mastodon seems to trend more to the latter now that I’m not on either of the others.

@c_dan4th Yeah, I have a rule like that for LinkedIn, which is nominally supposed to be for work connections, but I didn't always stick to it strictly.

@irilyth For LI, I have to have actually worked with or know the person. And I avoid it mostly.

For Strava, it’s anyone I’ve run/biked/whatever with, or people I particularly want to give encouragement to. And a few random people in my area who do interesting things.

Dawn 2d ago

@irilyth @c_dan4th Ironically I was gonna say only 1 or 2 but turns out, I also know Josh IRL! Hi Josh! ☺️

@dawne314 @c_dan4th Ha, wow, hi! How do you two know each other? (Dawn and I know each other from volleyball, way back when; Charles and I know each other from college, even more way back when. :^ )

@irilyth @dawne314 I have no idea how we know each other. Probably astronomy stuff. It’s not a big community.

Dawn 2d ago

@c_dan4th @irilyth We’ve never met in real life but if I remember correctly, we have a lot of mutual Colorado/astronomy friends

@dawne314 @irilyth Cool, well, it’s good to know you anyway!

metasilk 2d ago

@c_dan4th honestly I didn't count, I am just flinging darts at my memory. ;)

Megan KD3CPY 2d ago

@c_dan4th My accounts are hobby related, not real-life-socialization related. Overlap is mostly coincidental (though a little higher for one alt than this one) and I'm more likely to've "met" mutuals in other contexts online.

AlisonW ♿🏳️‍🌈♾️2d ago

@c_dan4th
Interesting. After clicking an option here I went and added up the actual answer. I undercounted!

Mister Dave 2d ago

@c_dan4th a few here, a bunch across all accounts

Bryan Redeagle

2d ago

@c_dan4th I lied. I answered none, and forgot that I follow a few folks from work.

@bryanredeagle I’m both jealous that you have coworkers on Fedi and relieved that I don’t have any coworkers on Fedi.

Lockpick Extreme 2d ago

@c_dan4th I met two this past weekend at @BSidesSF

Noel Kelly 2d ago

@c_dan4th

'A bunch', but all the meeting was in the before times and in Twitter days.

thedoh 🇨🇦2d ago

@c_dan4th @renata I have met 60% of the people I follow in person.

Granted, I don't follow a great number, but that is by design. :)

knizer 2d ago

@c_dan4th I’m in 10+ bracket as I focus on building local community with my account by doing a weekly events thread called #BostonWeekend.
You can meet more local mutuals by throwing an irl meetup! It’s easy and still legal, post to your closest city’s tag and get the ball rolling. I’m organizing #bostodon for eastern #masssachusetts on 4/19, come!

trisweb 2d ago

@knizer @c_dan4th still legal, lol

Seriously though, #bostodon is why this number is so high for me! Thanks!

rednikki 1d ago

@trisweb @knizer @c_dan4th Me too!

knizer 1d ago

@rednikki @trisweb @c_dan4th average fedi user meets 3 fedi users a year" factoid actualy just statistical error. average person meets 0 fedi users per year. #Bostodon Georg, who lives in cave & meets over 10,000 fedi users each #meetup, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

SaraMG 2d ago

@c_dan4th ISTM this question should have been based on percentages. 10% of 100 versus 100% of 10 are the same absolute number, but an answer to a very different question. Maybe ask both?

@saramg Lots of possible ways this could have gone. It would be nice to have more than four options as well, but that’s a limit to my instance.

I’m mostly interested in the conversations that this has been sparking. I have met more of my mutuals than I’d remembered!

Ada 1d ago

@c_dan4th I've met way more than 10 mutuals, but some of them didn't become mutuals until after we'd met :P

Timjan 1d ago

@c_dan4th 3?
But in two of these three cases, it's been many years since I met them (in non-fedi contexts); the third is very inactive, and I haven't told them my RL identity, so they probably don't even know that I am the one who's behind the dandelions.

Niavy

@c_dan4th
Met half a dozen over the 3 years here, then met about a dozen more last year when I went to Paris for a TV show.
Plus 2 or 3 I received snail mail from.
@LegalizeBrain

Emeline Parizel 1d ago

@c_dan4th they are so many of them I can't count anymore, thanks to biking and "mastaperos" (mastodon aperos)!
To think I didn't know any of them a few years ago 🤯

fourmiune 1d ago

@c_dan4th

I think they are all bots

David B.

@c_dan4th I met them before they joined, though, not after.

The Marvelous Mx Tellington 1d ago

@c_dan4th a bunch, but some I followed here after meeting them IRL

Ms. Denie 1d ago

@c_dan4th to be fair, I only ever met 1 twitter moot. Now tumblrina's...

Valentin C.1d ago

@c_dan4th it's more "I've added all friends and coworkers, so it feels nice"

📄 Mehdi.doc 1d ago

@c_dan4th I possibly know or have met more than 10 but I cannot check with the app, they are so spread out in my followers ^^

Stefan 1d ago

@c_dan4th If I take the people into account I knew before, then lots, otherwise none

smeg 1d ago

@c_dan4th I lurk on a couple coworkers, but when you work fully remote, you never meet IRL

Eleanor LNR Blair 1d ago

@c_dan4th I think I've met about 20% of the people I follow here. although I had to do a mental double check with some of the people I've known online forever as to whether we were actually ever in the same physical place.

Nowhere near all my friends though :)

Jos Dingjan 1d ago

@lnr @c_dan4th I stopped going through my list of mutuals once I’d counted 50, so >20% for me. Friends, acquaintances, work-related, fellow Pratchett fans, fellow train enthusiasts, etcetera etcetera.

Eleanor LNR Blair 1d ago

@happydisciple AFP, Livejournal, and the Cambridge geek crowd may all have been quite well represented.

Jos Dingjan 1d ago

@lnr I have some originally-FOAF links into some of those domains, as well as my own.

gigabecquerel 1d ago

@c_dan4th "A bunch", but this feels skewed as my local friends got me onto mastodon after twitter went shit, so I started out with 5-10 mutuals from day zero

Gary

@c_dan4th @purplepadma I went for 4-10, but that’s mostly folk I already knew IRL pre-fedi, and we all came over from Xwitter

Snail 1d ago

@c_dan4th I think technically 1, about 30 years ago at a computer fair.

The one other mutual I thought I had appears to be on a now dead instance (mastodonapp.uk) and I guess never migrated.

Most other people I knew personally from Twitter fled to Bluesky instead.

Edit: it appears mastodonapp.uk isn't dead, but I was definitely having issues connecting earlier and the status page suggests it's not complete healthy right now.

Hywel 1d ago

@snail @c_dan4th this is almost exactly my answer. Except the dead instance thing. The computer fair was maybe 25 years ago, not 30.

Snail 1d ago

@daycoder @c_dan4th it appears the instance may not be as dead as I thought, managed to reach out just now but their status page suggests it's not completely happy right now.

David Zaslavsky 1d ago

@c_dan4th All of mine are people I knew in real life first and then found on the Fediverse, which seems like it doesn't quite "count" the same as the other way around.

T. J. Bombadil 1d ago

@diazona There’s no wrong way to do it. Friends are friends.

Wynke 1d ago

@c_dan4th I checked a while ago and got to a serious majority, with high double digit numbers.

Wynke 1d ago

@c_dan4th That is, 50+. And that is no longer a majority but that's because I added more people.

Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE 1d ago

@c_dan4th Some of them are people I met

* first IRL and/or
* on news:cam.misc
* then on Twitter
* now here.

Stéphane Bortzmeyer 1d ago

@c_dan4th > 10 but it's not "all my friends"

Chris D.1d ago

@c_dan4th About twenty, but only about seven in the last two years,.most of the rest being "not since university, or at least close".

Alfred Chow - Maker of Things 1d ago

@c_dan4th
Oh, lots and lots. And even more from the old Twitter days too. It is the best!

It's like my past experience of internet dating.

It is better and safer to meet people you have already had a long dialogue with, have seen their dialogues with others, have seen their views on things, have some long experience of just knowing them, than meeting some rando in a pub, under the influence of alcohol, or being forced together due to a tenuous work/sports ball connection, or living in the same street, or a dubious introduction from a passing acquaintance.

Creatures