I listen to several Relay FM podcasts, which keeps me engaged in a sphere of technology personalities. They kept me up-to-date on the exodus from Twitter that this region of internet culture experienced, and their settlement into Mastodon.
I’ve never been a big Twitter user. Comical Start has/had an account where I tried to remember to post each week’s episode, but that’s mainly for the practice. Nobody cared that I did that, and I slowly turned that account into more of a personal account that followed the internet folks that I enjoy. I never tweeted at them because it was a show account, so I simply read things when I thought of it and that was that.
The movement to Mastodon offered me an opportunity to engage in this community in a way I was hesitant to while they were on Twitter. Its “closed off” nature—due mostly to the technical hurdles of signing up compared to traditional social media—was appealing. I could formulate a specific experience that I controlled, without algorithms interfering. I joined the Mathstodon instance1I sneakily added info to my About page as well. because it felt the most relevant and kept me out of the large sea of the general mastodon.social instance.
It’s been hugely enjoyable so far. I follow a small number of people who don’t generate too much content. I see a mix of technology, math, and baseball without anything else cluttering up my feed. It’s a linear timeline, and I feel I can actually interact with these podcast personalities without being totally lost in a mass of voices that they’d just as likely ignore. Now that it’s at least less toxic over there, I can tell that these interactions are actually visible and that keeps me engaged.
It’s a small part of my day. I spend maybe 5-10 minutes on Mastodon2I use the Megalodon app on Android. As of Fall 2023 when I switched to iPhone, I began using Ivory. each day catching up on a handful of posts and the occasional silly conversation between some folks, and that’s it. I get a bit of enjoyment, some online interaction, and it’s everything I’d hoped it would be.
- 1I sneakily added info to my About page as well.
- 2I use the Megalodon app on Android. As of Fall 2023 when I switched to iPhone, I began using Ivory.