actually why are Mastodon instances not called herds
can't believe we live in a post-modern futuristic dystopia and we didn't even get the cool cyberpunk aesthetic
@TQ huh, I thought diaspora (which I skipped) had that? Either way, it's certainly a nice concept (esp coming from twitter et al). It seems to turn people off, too, because they feel like they need to pick the "right" instance. That's what I gather from my twitter timeline, anyway, and it's certainly a thing that delayed my signing up
I'm engaged in a lot of meta-conversations now. The irony doesn't escape me.
@TQ interesting. What about mastodon is it that makes you think that?
@TQ also, if I didn't think this place might go somewhere I wouldn't be here. I hope it does. As you might've guessed, app.bet still hurts, though, so I'm not ready to get all excited.
@TQ I don't know… it feels a lot like early-days-app.net to me — that's where that thought came from. It's latter-days-app.net that had the problems, though, so who knows? Also app.net was a commercial operation, which makes all the difference in the world. In theory, twenty years down the line mastodon could be 200 old people spread over 150 instances, constantly ranting how it's so much nicer than facetwitter, and that would be fine with me. app.net couldn't do that, because money
@Averly point taken. I also don't think that this kind of meta-conversation is bad in and of itself. It's probably necessary. And then there's another difference between thinking publicly about what one wants for a social network and armchair quarterbacking how the rest of the world just doesn't understand it and doesn't know what's good for them. Both of which are fine, but the latter becomes a problem when it's what — in public perception — your social network is for 🤷🏻♀️
@thor huh, maybe I drew the wrong conclusions then? Reddit seems rather successful last I heard
@owlasylum it is, and to some degree this is probably needed. It was a year down the line when app.net started feeling like a self-centered monoculture because it couldn't stop talking about app.net…
@howfar yeah… also, to some degree these conversations are probably necessary. I was just trying to pin down what makes me feel so pessimistic for this place, and i think it's because to me mastodon feels very early-days-app.net. And both the enthusiasm and the meta-conversations are what make it feel like that.
Anyway, I'm not trying to poo-poo mastodon or even meta-conversations. It's just an observation — I'm here because I hope it works out 🤷🏻♀️
A lesson learned from app.net is that when all conversations on a social network are meta-conversations *about that social network* you get an incredibly boring, self-centered echo chamber that's very unappealing to most audiences (which, in turn, makes it more boring and self-centered).
Disclaimer: not *all* conversations on app.net were about app.net. Far from it, actually. Still, it was such a prevalent topic that it might as well have been the only one. I'm convinced this is what killed it.
This feels very 2009 in a lot of good, but also a lot of bad ways. Very exciting, very exhausting, a lot of room for UX improvements
Same @jamuraa
