+1 to this idea, and also have easy quoting/transposing from other independent sites so we can really talk with each other well. i think reshare + comment is an underrated feature that's been sadly twisted into just another way of dunking...instead of taking a comment out of context, take a comment and scaffold newer, better context around it...oops, there i go.
lots of talk about decentralization in the thread. i do think that's the way to go, but in the case of Mastodon specifically, their federation is something of a middle ground between pure distributed decentralization, and centralization. people sign up for instances, and they're "dialed into" that instance. so while they can communicate with any other individual and/or server that's federated, they're still reliant on the admins and maintainers of that instance. on the other hand, Mastodon makes it pretty easy to move to a new instance, so maybe you can host a personal instance in the future if you want more control?
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i remember at the start of mastodon a couple of the federations were extremely dominant. mastodon.technology in particular seemed to be what mastodon actually was going to primarily become. the size of that single instance grew rapidly and all searches for any instances put them at the top in addition to returning their hyperlink multiple times in the search results.
then the admins of that instance censored all content very heavily. many people moved to their own instance or to another one someone else had started, and mastodon became more distributed. I switched instances not because i was booted but just to be part of the exodus. My content stream stayed more or less the same and mastodon worked almost exactly as it should have.
but
here's the thing. mastodon sucks. it doesn't suck because its not as good as twitter it sucks because it
is as good as twiiter. it provides the same meta-social data stream for encouraging hyper-sociality that any of the huge social media sites provide. the interactivity is the same, the pacing is the same, even the aesthetics are the same. the only thing that changes is the content.
honestly, as far as i am concerned, all of the hyper social world can stay right where it is. i have absolutely no desire for it in my life. more interesting to me is the restructuring of interactivity and pacing, even aesthetics play what is likely a larger role in my judgement .
The pacing of the world itself seems far beyond me. Maybe that means I am a relic but it really feels like a more universal experience than most want to admit. I just don't understand how it can be expected of anyone to keep up with current trends of politics, society, technology. Covid itself is the merging of physical reality with the internet of memes. My local laws change at a pace i don't understand. Some groups of friends expect i wear a mask and others expect that i refuse to wear a mask. Frequently i am in the dark. money shows up randomly in my bank account. that's nice i guess. i think at a few points last year there was a local curfew, but also maybe not. i have no clue. this is just my physical reality. society changes at a pace much quicker. language no longer evolves it transmutes. the trans cashier at my local co-op always, and i mean always, refers to me as "man". i wear no tag with my pronouns.
the threads i post to 4chan or >reddit
disappear almost instantly into the oblivion of data to be further analyzed by Lord Elon's future AIs in order to provide us with an optimal Actual Reality. if they are hyped for an instant they linger a bit longer but never last more than 24 hours, and i mean never. This is the pace hyper society sets. One day is an eternity, one hour lingers longer than it should, we must be careful with our minutes not to make mistakes, and what we do this second ripples into eternity. It is a damnable pace to live at where the instant effects our entire life but we haven't got the mental space to enjoy a week as a singular space in time let alone a month.
This effects our interaction also, and it isn't the individuals that we can blame per se. We live in a world of ripples and if you arent riding at least one of their crests you wont see any of the hypersocial world around you. The news is like the longest television series ever. The current trends fit within a larger context of hyper-society. The language changes, the news is indecipherable. nobody can think three seconds out, there is no great meme of reflection.
It leaves no time to experience a
real moment. but underwater, under the surface, life is still. you can float in meditation. you can gather kelp. the pace
varies. most of the time you can look and see the things you have done, or made. you can peek up at the surface, you can see the battle ships floating, people bleeding on rafts, all of the carnage of war. if you need to you can dive deeper. but from down here redistributing the surface area seems rather undesirable.
underwater is the internet you are experiencing right now, and it is fantastic precisely because of the quality of existing
beneath the ripples. it provides no means to navigate the tough waters. it isnt a new fancy ship. it does not seek to redistribute ownership of the sea. you get to look and take part at a pacing you choose. you can even choose to swim up if you want, and you have a pretty good schematic of whats going on. you can grab pieces of debris floating at the surface and build fantastic cities. you can use it to make art or music. you can share that creation with others that are
submerged. the chaos on the surface even begins to serve as a sieve to filter those too enamored with the spectacle of hyper-society out.
This particular quality of being
submerged makes the internet we have now better than ever. forums such as this exist at a pace that makes sense, at least to me. they have an aesthetic that i like. the interaction is one of
quality. threads linger. you can think about content meaningfully and grow yourself from it. you can respond after real thought. you can read the real input others contribute. I can still find the thread i was reading from a week ago easily. I can find the one that brought me here to lurk still, and that is months old i believe.
i hope that others realize this also. reworking the surface might be important but that is not being neglected. most people are on the surface, and a large percentage of them are working that out. pacing is neglected, aesthetics are neglected(or manipulated), and interactivity is almost completely ignored even down here where they actually exist. It would be great to see those qualities evolve, I am sure there are other important things also but that is what i can think of right now