The Apathetic Mastodon

On at least three occasions toots that were written as a cry for empathy, or at least venting, were interacted with by apathetic people. For this simple reason I deleted two Fediverse accounts. I deleted my Mastodon.social account, and my FireFish.social accounts. I have a precise desire, when using social media. That desire is to find a community of likeminded individuals that I have such enjoyable conversations with, that I want to meet them in person.

Noise Pollution

Noise pollution is caused by apathetic people, people that don’t consider that people want to sleep, study, think or other things. If noise pollution was not a problem libraries and other places of learning would not require quiet. They would be as noisy as everywhere else. For daring to complain about noise pollution I was insulted, and then mocked on mastodon.social. When I look to vent, or, ideally, find empathy, and I find apathy my instant desire is to tell the person to duck off. I didn’t. I decided to write one more toot. The second response encouraged me to block the apathetic individual.

The Cult of Personality

I don’t remember what a second person wrote but it encouraged me to speak about normal people as sheeple, and to speak about the benefits of tight knit communities. One individual denounced the term sheeple and then wrote some rubbish about how not all accounts with a million followers are bad. I considered responding but didn’t. Why fight an uphill battle.

The Trigger

The trigger that got me to delete my mastodon.social and firefish.social posts was an ironic “I’m happy for you”. I am almost certain that it was ironic, although due to a lack of emoticons I do not know this for certain. What I do know is that I dumped Facebook early in the pandemic because of such interactions.

The Options

Give Up on Social Media

Sometimes I feel like giving up on asocial media. I feel like giving up on asocial media because the space is shared between generations, and use cases. Some people are utilitarian broadcasts, whose only desire is to find a mass audience. The second group are trolls looking for a misunderstanding, rather than a conversation, and the third group The third group are people, like me, who want to converse, but have to spend weeks or months finding pleasant conversations.

That’s why it’s tempting to give up on social media. It takes so much time and yet it’s so fragile. I’m thinking of returning to Facebook and Twitter because of how bad Mastodon is at the moment.

The Fediverse and Blogging

I wrote Mastodon above, because although I feel that Mastodon is a waste of time, due to how easy it is to be trolled, but very difficult to find empathy, it feels like working with WordPress and other Fediverse compatible instances is an interesting playground to play in. I love that my blog is somewhere so visible now. It is no longer stuck in a desert, it is at the front of my Fediverse streams, when i like and share my blog posts. I feel that this is the Fediverse’s unique selling point.

Revert to Facebook and Twitter

The reason for leaving Twitter and Facebook is/was to leave a toxic environment and look for a healthier community where it is fun to invest time and attention. With my experience of Mastodon, in particular, I feel that staying away makes sense, especially from big instances. The experiences we left Twitter and Facebook to avoid, are present on Mastodon.social.

Stay on Small Instances

The other, more rational option is to stay on smaller instances, and just wait until communities form. It might take months or years, but eventually they might arrive. This will take time.

Use a Nickname

Another option would be to use the web anonymously, using a nickname, like so many people do, to avoid trolls having an effect on your official persona. It’s the rational choice, but a social network where you have to hide behind an avatar is less interesting than one where people use their actual names.

And Finally

Although Mastodon and the Fediverse are growing both places are still filled with solitude. We can devote hours a day, to try to find engagement, or we can take a break, write a blog post that is shared to the Fediverse, and let it do the talking.