So I guess this will be my first test of my Junknet > Mastodon integration. Hopefully it works!
Life has certainly been interesting lately, at least in the social media realm. With Twitter potentially circling the drain, I have set up an account on Mastodon as a backup. While the performance is a little lacking yet, which I totally expect from the likely-unprecedented number of Twitter orphans looking for a new home, I’m really impressed with it so far.
One thing I learned after leaving Facebook (intentionally or not), was that I certainly didn’t prepare by ensuring that the connections I had on there had backup connections. I (incorrectly) assumed that people’s email addresses and other contact information downloaded as part of my Facebook data dump (narrator: they didn’t). As such, I instantly lost touch with many people I actually enjoyed interacting with. My Facebook exodus was only 50% intentional – I had planned on leaving it anyway, but they booted me before I was able tie up loose ends due to not using a “real” name.
That said, Twitter for me has been a much more “fleeting” experience than Facebook. I originally signed up for Twitter to get some “real-time” updates to weather events while travelling, and never really intended to use it socially.
Unlike Facebook, instead of just digitally connecting to people I already knew (which are a tiny minority of who I follow on Twitter), I was forced to find new people to connect with. Interestingly, I also switched gears on hobbies with the changeover; I lost connection to many of my arcade/coin-up and grease monkey friends, in lieu of finding new vintage computing friends. My hobbies followed suite (unfortunately my storage did not). While I most definitely miss a lot of the coin-up and other camaraderie I had on Facebook, I really haven’t had a desire to replicate that on some other platform; I’m actually happier with the (not very large) list of connections I made on Twitter, many of which have now threw out the “life boats” into the Mastodon waters.
Curious to see how the Twitter saga and new Mastodon will play out; I have no predictions at this point!