The New Place

Three weeks in and I'm still learning new stuff on Mastodon.

There are things that I miss about Twitter—besides, obvs, the friends I made over the last dozen years. I miss the direct messages (DMs) that seem to be missing: at least, on the instance to which I subscribe. I miss being able to schedule messages: I mainly used Hootsuite, which doesn't seem to be compatible, at the moment, with Mastodon, but I also used to write tweets that I'd schedule to post at a later time.

It doesn't seem to be the case with Mastodon, which is a drag for when I want to schedule announcements of new blog posts. I have to manually publish them to my instance.

But I don't miss the ads and other promoted tweets. I'd end up either muting or blocking the person or company that would post these messages, which would repeat themselves over and over in my feed. And when I blocked one, another would take its place.

It was like playing Whack-a-Mole.

I thought I'd feel overwhelmed by Mastodon's local timeline, which shows posts by everyone who is signed up to my instance, mas.to, and even more inundated by the federated timeline, that shows everybody on all instances. But I don't.

For the most part, I ignore those timelines unless something becomes visible and catches my eye.

I love how I can follow hashtags, as well as people. I follow the photography hashtag,  as well as the Ottawa, cycling, and craft beer hashtags. It's nice to meet people with similar interests without following the people, directly.

I'm trying to follow new people and appreciate those who have started following me. I'm trying to be less of a presence online, opting to only post a couple of times each day. I announce my new blog posts only once and I share a random photo of the day—something I've taken at some point, that I hope is interesting for others.

I don't automatically follow people who start following me, unless I was following them, previously, on Twitter. My criteria for following someone remains the same: when I see that I have a new follower, I check their bio and timeline. If you seem to share similar interests or if I find you interesting, it's likely I'll follow you back.

But if you don't post anything or you only re-post (boost, I think Mastodon calls it), I likely won't follow you back. If anything, I might follow the people whose posts you've shared.

I'm close to closing down my Twitter account but I'm not ready to do it yet. First, there are too many people who I follow who have not left Musk's crumbling platform and I want to keep in touch with them. I'm not ready to cut any ties from my Twitter peeps.

And who knows? Maybe Twitter will make some sort of recovery that will bring me back.

And maybe Twitter will add an Edit button (I can edit a published 'toot' in Mastodon!).

If you have a Mastodon account and wish to follow me, find me at @BrownKnowser@mstdn.ca.

Happy Monday!