laura lemayPeople who claim there is no engagement on Mastodon have never posted a photo of a really cute cat and it shows.
Nomdeb
Glowing Cat of the Nuclear Wastelands@lemay Also works with other cute animals! I see lots of bunnies, dogs, guinea pigs, foxes, trash pandas, birds, the occasional donkey or horse, sheep (especially post sheep). Like, if it's an animal and even vaguely cute, they do numbers.
Michael Katzmann🐈
Willow (she/her)@lemay In my experience ppl who get "no engagement" on Mastodon are here looking for an audience not community.
Octavia Con Amore 
Succubard's Library@MsHearthWitch @lemay bingo, they want to post *at* people (whereas the correct way is to *meow* at people 
)
)
Z_Zed_Zed
McRocker 🇨🇦🍁@lemay
Have you met Pumpkin? He found his way to our house (and hearts) in 2011... skinny & bedraggled. He hated the house and never wanted to stay indoors, so we built him a cat sanctuary in the woodshed complete with warming pad. When I took him to the vet's to have him checked out & neutered... seems he had already been uh, 'attended to'. Pumpkin hasn't been around for about 3 years now ... loved that cat.
Have you met Pumpkin? He found his way to our house (and hearts) in 2011... skinny & bedraggled. He hated the house and never wanted to stay indoors, so we built him a cat sanctuary in the woodshed complete with warming pad. When I took him to the vet's to have him checked out & neutered... seems he had already been uh, 'attended to'. Pumpkin hasn't been around for about 3 years now ... loved that cat.
The Orange Theme
Ighostrider
Rebecca Wallace@lemay Yes! Or dogs! The animal community in this place is beautiful.
Electric Sheep
Stephen Bannasch (316 ppm)
Stephen Bannasch (316 ppm) (@[email protected])
Attached: 1 video How Stella says “more love now please!” #DogsOfMastodon #Stella
Gustavo
Kierkethumbs up convincingly@lemay slop cats incoming!
Raven de Lioncourt@lemay xD I am brand new to the app, but I think the cat thinks is so true anywhere
yakkoj 🦊@lemay wait we're still hearing this "no engagement" baloney?
I was on Twitter for 14 years, and I've been on Mastodon since 2017, and my own experience is completely different. I got mostly no engagement on Twitter, but I've gotten more genuine interaction on Mastodon in 9 years than I ever got in 14 on Twitter. You just need to not be a garbage person (foreign concept to some, I know...)
Aliide
ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘
AJ Sadauskas@anne_twain @yakkoj @lemay I get the impression that there's people (especially folks who have a mainstream media presence) who have basically treated Facebook, X/Twitter, and Instagram as broadcast channels.
They've taken their follower counts to heart, without considering that the number might be inflated by nearly 20 years of dead accounts, bots, scammers, spammers, and duplicates.
They've mastered the art of writing hot takes and rage bait that will get picked up by an algorithm. (This is distinct from information their followers would actually want to share of engage with.)
They don't engage with people by replying to other people's posts or responding to people who reply to their posts.
They don't share of like anyone else's posts.
Then they try the same crap here.
And it predictably falls flat.
Now personally, I've found people on Masto are *more* likely to share engaging, insightful, informative, or funny posts.
But only if they're posts of value, as opposed to algorithm-bait.
They've taken their follower counts to heart, without considering that the number might be inflated by nearly 20 years of dead accounts, bots, scammers, spammers, and duplicates.
They've mastered the art of writing hot takes and rage bait that will get picked up by an algorithm. (This is distinct from information their followers would actually want to share of engage with.)
They don't engage with people by replying to other people's posts or responding to people who reply to their posts.
They don't share of like anyone else's posts.
Then they try the same crap here.
And it predictably falls flat.
Now personally, I've found people on Masto are *more* likely to share engaging, insightful, informative, or funny posts.
But only if they're posts of value, as opposed to algorithm-bait.
Ryan Finnie
Juha Haataja
Danish Akhtar
greenpepper22@lemay this really seems like a thinly veiled way to get sent lots of cute cats pictures
Hyrax 
Si Fuller
Eye
Alexa Devreux-SwiftOn Mastodon, if you want engagement just miaow 🐈
Demokritus Jorik 
Svavar the Neurospicy
Pink :3
Sybren A. Stüvel@lemay even without a cat picture I see more engagement here than on BlueSky!
Giuseppe Bilotta@lemay I'm not ashamed to confess I've been thinking about adding cat photos to posts where I talk about science because my single most successful post is a random one of a cat on a chat. I expected it to be liked because, I mean, Fediverse and cats of course it's going to make numbers, but I never expected it to get spread so much!
@lemay Tell them to boost a photo of Owls in Towels. @owlsintowels Works every time. It's a no- brainer.
rustybikes 🐧
Miakoda 
@lemay Mastodon numbers are much smaller, but they're all people who ACTUALLY like and want to boost. Not bots. Not advertisers.
@hellomiakoda @lemay I bookmarked your post. This is beautiful.
the gripe ibis@lemay or mentioned that they found a cool rock
howrawhowrue 
Jonobie