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Mastodon really serves no purpose. If you want to find a sense of community with real discussion, you join a threaded discussion forum with like-minded individ

Mastodon really serves no purpose. If you want to find a sense of community with real discussion, you join a threaded discussion forum with like-minded individuals. If you want to scream in to the ether and have other people "follow" you, that's what Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok are for. Centralized ether screaming will always be better than decentralized ether screaming because ego reinforcement from counters is a "more is always better" kind of thing.

flangola7 3y ago
Where are there still forums?
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Cars, motorcycles, urban development, piloting, semiconductor engineering, etc... all have sizable active forums. Not every niche but in a lot. In those cases Mastodon really is more akin to decentralized shouting into the void then a hotbed of genuinely valuable discussions.
- themagician 3y ago
  Look up. * music from Inception grows louder *
- ulrischa 3y ago
  Stackoverflow etc.
  - pasc1878 3y ago
    Stackexchange is definitely NOT a forum. It is not for discussions. If there is a debate then it means the question is not well posed.
ar-nelson 3y ago
Disagree. Mastodon isn't so much a Twitter alternative as a Tumblr alternative with Twitter-like UX. And its value proposition is much the same as Tumblr: curate a collection of interesting discussions and memes from across the network, and in the process find people who like the same kinds of things and build connections with them. It's not about "number go up" in the same way Twitter or Instagram is because there's no algorithm to give it a feedback loop. Both Twitter/Instagram and Tumblr/Mastodon are about getting community/attention from strangers by posting what you want and letting them come to you (as opposed to Reddit or forums where you join existing discussions). But the Twitter/Instagram model relies on an algorithm so it only benefits those who are already famous or who invest in gaming the system, whereas Tumblr/Mastodon make it easy for everyone to find their community of a few dozen mutuals without being buried by the algorithm.
- themagician 3y ago
  It's all ether screaming mate. You scream into a black hole and hope someone (or something) responds. The only reason people continue to do it is because numbers go up. If numbers don't go up, people leave. I'm not knocking it, I do it too. We are all desperate for connection and have a desire to be heard. We don't even care if it's real or not, we just don't want to feel alone. We are so desperate for connection, in fact, that we will create work that others profit from just so we don't feel alone. It's why we are talking to each other right now. We could be doing anything else right now, but here we are. Desperate to be heard. Clicking refresh. Wanting to feel validated. Even if one of us is a bot, does it matter? The feeling is real.
  - NoraCodes 3y ago
    I dunno. I've met most of my friends, including a lot of people in my local area, via the Fediverse, long before these recent waves of migration. Numbers are a lot less important than real connection.
- gknoy 3y ago
  Thanks for posting this -- as someone who was never on Tumblr, nor used Mastadon, this still felt like an interesting explanatory facet that helps me understand it better, both in terms of mindset and how people use it.
CharlieDigital 3y ago
> Centralized ether screaming will always be better than decentralized ether screaming because ego reinforcement from counters is a "more is always better" kind of thing This reads like you pretty much described the essence of why Twitter is kinda terrible: "ego reinforcement" is about as far as you can get from engaging with a community.
- devmor 3y ago
  Nail on the head, but also why services like twitter will always be the preference for most people. To the majority of people, community engagement means a platform to speak to a community and see that what you've said has had some kind of effect. Rather than "taking part" in a community, what most people want is to "make use of" a community in a way that stimulates their emotions. To bring the topic off on a slight tangent - I think this is an example of a distillation of natural human instincts. We've recognized the dopamine hit we get from the evolutionary favored behavior of building a community and engaging with it, and then found a way to separate it and repeat it without the effort that led to its evolution.
deleted 3y ago
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flangola7 3y ago

Where are there still forums?

MichaelZuo 3y ago
Cars, motorcycles, urban development, piloting, semiconductor engineering, etc... all have sizable active forums. Not every niche but in a lot. In those cases Mastodon really is more akin to decentralized shouting into the void then a hotbed of genuinely valuable discussions.
themagician 3y ago
Look up. * music from Inception grows louder *
ulrischa 3y ago
Stackoverflow etc.
- pasc1878 3y ago
  Stackexchange is definitely NOT a forum. It is not for discussions. If there is a debate then it means the question is not well posed.

ar-nelson 3y ago

Disagree. Mastodon isn't so much a Twitter alternative as a Tumblr alternative with Twitter-like UX. And its value proposition is much the same as Tumblr: curate a collection of interesting discussions and memes from across the network, and in the process find people who like the same kinds of things and build connections with them. It's not about "number go up" in the same way Twitter or Instagram is because there's no algorithm to give it a feedback loop. Both Twitter/Instagram and Tumblr/Mastodon are about getting community/attention from strangers by posting what you want and letting them come to you (as opposed to Reddit or forums where you join existing discussions). But the Twitter/Instagram model relies on an algorithm so it only benefits those who are already famous or who invest in gaming the system, whereas Tumblr/Mastodon make it easy for everyone to find their community of a few dozen mutuals without being buried by the algorithm.

themagician 3y ago
It's all ether screaming mate. You scream into a black hole and hope someone (or something) responds. The only reason people continue to do it is because numbers go up. If numbers don't go up, people leave. I'm not knocking it, I do it too. We are all desperate for connection and have a desire to be heard. We don't even care if it's real or not, we just don't want to feel alone. We are so desperate for connection, in fact, that we will create work that others profit from just so we don't feel alone. It's why we are talking to each other right now. We could be doing anything else right now, but here we are. Desperate to be heard. Clicking refresh. Wanting to feel validated. Even if one of us is a bot, does it matter? The feeling is real.
- NoraCodes 3y ago
  I dunno. I've met most of my friends, including a lot of people in my local area, via the Fediverse, long before these recent waves of migration. Numbers are a lot less important than real connection.
gknoy 3y ago
Thanks for posting this -- as someone who was never on Tumblr, nor used Mastadon, this still felt like an interesting explanatory facet that helps me understand it better, both in terms of mindset and how people use it.

CharlieDigital 3y ago

> Centralized ether screaming will always be better than decentralized ether screaming because ego reinforcement from counters is a "more is always better" kind of thing This reads like you pretty much described the essence of why Twitter is kinda terrible: "ego reinforcement" is about as far as you can get from engaging with a community.

devmor 3y ago
Nail on the head, but also why services like twitter will always be the preference for most people. To the majority of people, community engagement means a platform to speak to a community and see that what you've said has had some kind of effect. Rather than "taking part" in a community, what most people want is to "make use of" a community in a way that stimulates their emotions. To bring the topic off on a slight tangent - I think this is an example of a distillation of natural human instincts. We've recognized the dopamine hit we get from the evolutionary favored behavior of building a community and engaging with it, and then found a way to separate it and repeat it without the effort that led to its evolution.

deleted 3y ago

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