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0. It's been 15 years and I still don't know how to use Twitter. 1. Most of my online social interactions come from people interacting with my work (writing, c

0. It's been 15 years and I still don't know how to use Twitter. 1. Most of my online social interactions come from people interacting with my work (writing, code, drawings) through: - my say hi calls (https://sonnet.io/posts/hi https://sonnet.io/posts/hi) - Mastodon Quality > quantity ("the Internet is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is.", i.e. small niches are big enough) Not every company needs to be a unicorn, and you don't get closer to people with 10000s of followers vs. 100s who genuinely care. 2. When I started moving my content from instagram to potato.horse I noticed that suddenly content selection and adding captions to images became so much easier. It's so hard to escape the performative/"screaming into the void" frame of mind when using algo driven social media. Now, I still syndicate to IG and Reddit, but I have templates with comments redirecting users to potato.horse, where I can do whatever the f*ck I want with my content.

muhammadusman 3y ago
I love the domain potato.horse
SeanAnderson 3y ago
Hello :) I just wanted to let you know that I intend to reach out and say hi to you soon. Your website resonated with me and I think we'll click in our conversation. I'm travelling for a week come tomorrow, but when I am back in town I'll book something. Cheers
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  Roger that, speak soon!
jiofj 3y ago
You don't know how to use twitter but you know how to use mastodon? Aren't they basically the same thing?
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  The other comments explain this better than I could. In short: I can post the same message on Twitter and Mastodon and get a thoughtful comment on the latter vs. no engagement/shitpost on the former. Twitter feels like a bunch of angry people screaming into the void, whereas Mastodon is like screaming in a small cave filled with friendly weirdos. I like that. Eventually you lower your voice and start chatting.
- CharlieDigital 3y ago
  There is a bit of nuance in how these two are different and I'd say Mastodon feels more like early Twitter or early Facebook. On the consume side, that means your home feed has no algorithm. Practically, it means you only see what you want and you only see it linearly. You never wonder "why am I seeing this and how do I make it go away?" (e.g. Elon constantly in my feed for some reason) Content can only enter your home feed via your followed tags or handles. The home feed is linear like the early days of FB. Early FB was great; I used it as a news feed as I only "liked" sources I wanted news from. Today? The feed is algorithmically assembled and full of content that is indistinguishable from ads (because of course, both FB and X make their money from ads and algorithmically enhanced engagement). Am I seeing this because someone paid to boost the views? How do I get this feed to behave? (Hypothetical question; maybe it's possible with a lot of tuning and config -- Mastodon just does exactly what I want/expect out of the box: follow these tags + follow these people = see this content in a linear flow) To me, this simplicity makes it much more approachable on the consume side. On the publish side, it lets you see the activity level of tags in the past week. This makes it easier to decide "how should I tag this content?". One other aspect that I think the HN crowd can appreciate is that you don't have to figure out the platform settings for privacy and opt out of ads, tracking, and so on. Yes, there are still some privacy settings to toggle, but Mastodon isn't an ad platform and doesn't make money from being able to track you across the web and feeding you ads. More intuitive on both the pub and sub sides, IMO. If you liked early FB and early Twitter, you'll instantly find Mastodon more pleasant and intuitive to use.
  - queuebert 3y ago
    I also found that Elon was always in my feed even though I don't follow him, so I blocked him and now he's gone.
jmrm 3y ago
I had Twitter around ten years ago to talk with content creators, like youtubers or writters. Outside that is mostly a politics and celebrities echo chamber.
nicbou 3y ago
Our personal websites are so similar! (https://nicolasbouliane.com https://nicolasbouliane.com) I thought "wow that font is beautiful" then realised that it was also EB Garamond. The art really brings it together. I wish I sketched as often or as well as you do. Potato.horse is a work of art. How do you syndicate to Instagram and Twitter? I'd love to do something similar. I like your art and the way you chose to present it. I also met a lot of people through my work, including close friends. I love when people reach out and I try to reward it whenever it happens. What you describe seems like being a participant in a small community, instead of a person on a soapbox.
- romesc 3y ago
  I also love it and am interested in hearing more about how you approach syndication!
- rpastuszak 3y ago
  Wow, that's uncanny. Your site looks lovely. Random remarks: I also used a fleuron as a decoration on my site before I replaced it with a little doodle (I call him Janusz). And, I'm even working on a recipes section for my own site at the moment! Also, hope the little subheader with the pronunciation of your name works. (psst just checking out your carbonara recipe, here's my cacio e pepe with black garlic: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OUytE9oUnmnwf5BPqt79vqi_l-QbOxeRNM3RVJBEte8/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OUytE9oUnmnwf5BPqt79vqi_...) > it was also EB Garamond. Yeah, EB Garamond does the heavy lifting for me design-wise. I use it in Enso (enso.sonnet.io) and Sit. (sit.sonnet.io). I also have an alternative "brutalist" font stack (e.g. butter.sonnet.io), which I use in less serious/"louder" projects. I think I picked it up from a Germany based writer IIRC. > How do you syndicate to Instagram and Twitter? Instagram is hard. I don't know if even Buffer supports it without any manual steps. For Twitter I used their API. A GH Actions CRON job would query Contentful for the most recent posts, then push them to Twitter using the twitter NPM package. Recently it's been quite janky. > I also met a lot of people through my work, including close friends. I love when people reach out and I try to reward it whenever it happens. What you describe seems like being a participant in a small community, instead of a person on a soapbox. It does feel like this. Sometimes I manage connect some of the people I meet this way, but it happens rarely. I entertained the idea of having a small forum (like ponder.us). Let's talk some time! (https://calendly.com/hey_hey https://calendly.com/hey_hey)

muhammadusman 3y ago

I love the domain potato.horse

SeanAnderson 3y ago

Hello :) I just wanted to let you know that I intend to reach out and say hi to you soon. Your website resonated with me and I think we'll click in our conversation. I'm travelling for a week come tomorrow, but when I am back in town I'll book something. Cheers

rpastuszak 3y ago
Roger that, speak soon!

jiofj 3y ago

You don't know how to use twitter but you know how to use mastodon? Aren't they basically the same thing?

rpastuszak 3y ago
The other comments explain this better than I could. In short: I can post the same message on Twitter and Mastodon and get a thoughtful comment on the latter vs. no engagement/shitpost on the former. Twitter feels like a bunch of angry people screaming into the void, whereas Mastodon is like screaming in a small cave filled with friendly weirdos. I like that. Eventually you lower your voice and start chatting.
CharlieDigital 3y ago
There is a bit of nuance in how these two are different and I'd say Mastodon feels more like early Twitter or early Facebook. On the consume side, that means your home feed has no algorithm. Practically, it means you only see what you want and you only see it linearly. You never wonder "why am I seeing this and how do I make it go away?" (e.g. Elon constantly in my feed for some reason) Content can only enter your home feed via your followed tags or handles. The home feed is linear like the early days of FB. Early FB was great; I used it as a news feed as I only "liked" sources I wanted news from. Today? The feed is algorithmically assembled and full of content that is indistinguishable from ads (because of course, both FB and X make their money from ads and algorithmically enhanced engagement). Am I seeing this because someone paid to boost the views? How do I get this feed to behave? (Hypothetical question; maybe it's possible with a lot of tuning and config -- Mastodon just does exactly what I want/expect out of the box: follow these tags + follow these people = see this content in a linear flow) To me, this simplicity makes it much more approachable on the consume side. On the publish side, it lets you see the activity level of tags in the past week. This makes it easier to decide "how should I tag this content?". One other aspect that I think the HN crowd can appreciate is that you don't have to figure out the platform settings for privacy and opt out of ads, tracking, and so on. Yes, there are still some privacy settings to toggle, but Mastodon isn't an ad platform and doesn't make money from being able to track you across the web and feeding you ads. More intuitive on both the pub and sub sides, IMO. If you liked early FB and early Twitter, you'll instantly find Mastodon more pleasant and intuitive to use.
- queuebert 3y ago
  I also found that Elon was always in my feed even though I don't follow him, so I blocked him and now he's gone.

jmrm 3y ago

I had Twitter around ten years ago to talk with content creators, like youtubers or writters. Outside that is mostly a politics and celebrities echo chamber.

nicbou 3y ago

Our personal websites are so similar! (https://nicolasbouliane.com https://nicolasbouliane.com) I thought "wow that font is beautiful" then realised that it was also EB Garamond. The art really brings it together. I wish I sketched as often or as well as you do. Potato.horse is a work of art. How do you syndicate to Instagram and Twitter? I'd love to do something similar. I like your art and the way you chose to present it. I also met a lot of people through my work, including close friends. I love when people reach out and I try to reward it whenever it happens. What you describe seems like being a participant in a small community, instead of a person on a soapbox.

romesc 3y ago
I also love it and am interested in hearing more about how you approach syndication!
rpastuszak 3y ago
Wow, that's uncanny. Your site looks lovely. Random remarks: I also used a fleuron as a decoration on my site before I replaced it with a little doodle (I call him Janusz). And, I'm even working on a recipes section for my own site at the moment! Also, hope the little subheader with the pronunciation of your name works. (psst just checking out your carbonara recipe, here's my cacio e pepe with black garlic: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OUytE9oUnmnwf5BPqt79vqi_l-QbOxeRNM3RVJBEte8/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OUytE9oUnmnwf5BPqt79vqi_...) > it was also EB Garamond. Yeah, EB Garamond does the heavy lifting for me design-wise. I use it in Enso (enso.sonnet.io) and Sit. (sit.sonnet.io). I also have an alternative "brutalist" font stack (e.g. butter.sonnet.io), which I use in less serious/"louder" projects. I think I picked it up from a Germany based writer IIRC. > How do you syndicate to Instagram and Twitter? Instagram is hard. I don't know if even Buffer supports it without any manual steps. For Twitter I used their API. A GH Actions CRON job would query Contentful for the most recent posts, then push them to Twitter using the twitter NPM package. Recently it's been quite janky. > I also met a lot of people through my work, including close friends. I love when people reach out and I try to reward it whenever it happens. What you describe seems like being a participant in a small community, instead of a person on a soapbox. It does feel like this. Sometimes I manage connect some of the people I meet this way, but it happens rarely. I entertained the idea of having a small forum (like ponder.us). Let's talk some time! (https://calendly.com/hey_hey https://calendly.com/hey_hey)