holy shit there's literally a monster-themed mastodon instance; maybe i was too hasty getting a mastodon.social one
@xax still haven't wrapped my brain around the whole "instance" thing.
@Klaxun in practice it's like, "whose server do you want your account to be on, and who do you trust as a moderator", but there's a lot of you know, social dynamics there too. are you on a fun party instance or a serious news instance etc
@xax that sounds pretty complicated. Do the instances all talk with each other?
@Klaxun yeah, when you hear anybody talk about 'federation', they're talking about different instances talking. so like, the 'local timeline' is just posts from mastodon.social, but the 'federated timeline' is all posts from any instance that's federated with mastodon.social (and i think federation happens automatically whenever anybody here follows anybody on another server -- that federates the servers so they talk to each other)
@xax Okay, that is starting to become more clear. Thank you for patiently answering my noob questions.
@Klaxun oh hey, no problem; i've only had an account here for a few hours myself :V

@xax You can apparently switch instances! You have to export your contacts/data and then import them on the new instance. Your followers have to re-follow you at your new address. Otherwise, it's supposed to be pretty painless.

Also, I saw the monster one, too! But if it's the same one, there weren't many people in it.

@fidgety huh, that's real interesting! it makes sense -- just export and import -- but after so long using giant monolith sites i've forgotten how it was like, like, back in the livejournal days when everybody was just running separate instances
@xax I miss LJ. I'm on DW now, but LJ back in the day played such an important part in my life.
@fidgety yeah nothing yet has really matched LJ in its heyday. both socially and mechanically -- i used tumblr for a while, and the part where there was no flocking or communities or anything like that constantly chafed. i'm super glad mastodon comes with per-post privacy controls!
@xax Oh, I totally agree. Not to mention that you'd actually have to put thought into what you posted. Simple status updates are more or less mindless. I'd rather read a full, well-crafted entry.