What if the problem with the Twitter mob isn’t Twitter but the mob?

The world is a terrible place right now, and that’s largely because it is what we make it. (WIL WHEATON dot NET)

Buuuuuuuuuut … I’m done with social media. Maybe I just don’t fit into whatever the social media world is. I mean, the people who are all over the various Mastodon instances made it really clear that I wasn’t welcome there (with a handful of notable, joyful, exceptions, mostly related to my first baby steps into painting), and it seems as if I was just unwelcome because … I’m me? I guess? Like, I know that I’m not a transphobe, but holy shit that lie just won’t die, and right now as I am writing this, someone at Mastodon is telling me that I am, because people said so, and I should apologize to them. I mean, how am I supposed to respond to that, when it happens over and over and over again? “You’ve been lied to about me. Please give me a chance” just doesn’t seem like a viable way forward with people who are, for whatever reason, very, very angry. And these people seem to have an idea of me in their head that doesn’t fit with the idea of myself that I have in my head. It’s honestly caused me to rethink a lot of stuff. Like, am I really the terrible person they say I am? I don’t think I am, but I’m doing my best to listen, and when I say, “please stop yelling at me and let’s have a conversation that I can grow from” I get yelled at for “tone policing” and honestly I just get exhausted and throw up my hands. Maybe I’m not this person they tell me I am, but I represent that person in their heads, and they treat me accordingly? This is one of those times when my mental illness makes it very hard for me to know what’s objective reality and what’s just in my head.

I quite often feel the same way about social media. I found this article suggesting that the problem with social media is the social, the mob. I agree.

!Mastodon

Mastodon: Now I've Got Two Problems by Gabe Weatherhead (macdrifter.com)

In what can only be called a "double turns-out", Mastodon instances can be changed in ways to not be part of the federated group. So, I guess centralized might be the only way to have a unified communication channel. Within two days I've moved from one Mastodon instance to another. I've noticed that this is somewhat common.

I did not have an easy experience on Mastodon. I am happy I did not invest too much energy into it. Is Twitter so bad that people are willing to put up with such a poor user experience on Mastodon?

A Critique of Mastadon

A Critique of Mastadon by Jonathan Zdziarski (zdziarski.com)

Nobody wants to put up with a decentralized social media server unless you’re some Stallman-era glutton for punishment. Some servers are clearly run from someone’s basement and the modem grade bandwidth and frequent reboots show it. People don’t want to go to a different website just to sign up either. Users expect a unified experience. Give them one. Get funding. Build infrastructure or a cloud. Make it a single, centrally managed system that invites the creation of small managed communities. Decentralized social media is not cool. It wasn’t cool when we were having hourly net-splits on IRC, and its not cool now.

I gave up on Mastodon within a month of creating my account. I found it unusable.