Post by @Robinzz3@aus.social

THE FEDIVERSE CERTAINLY HASN'T
ABOLISHED ARSEHOLES 💎

I spent part of this morning answering a fairly large pile of comments on my posts. And somewhere between my breathwork, lighting the fire and drinking my coffee, I noticed something.

NOBODY WAS BEING HORRIBLE.

People disagreed with me. People corrected things I said. People brought different experiences and different political views. There were jokes, arguments, questions and tangents. But almost none of that peculiar tension I became accustomed to on the big closed social platforms.

YOU KNOW THE FEELING.

Someone says something mildly contentious, and suddenly twelve strangers are preparing for the next Battle of Facebook. I haven't experienced much of that here. Perhaps I've simply been lucky. The Fediverse certainly hasn't abolished arseholes. Give humanity sufficient time, and I'm confident we'll manage to decentralise those too.

But I wonder whether something structural is happening? The giant platforms discovered that anger, fear and outrage are extraordinarily good at keeping human beings engaged. Conflict isn't necessarily an unfortunate side effect of the system. It can be profitable.

Here, there isn't one enormous corporation deciding what billions of people should see next in order to keep them scrolling. And perhaps that changes the temperature of the room.

THERE'S ANOTHER POSSIBILITY TOO.

Maybe our communities become partly what we practise in them. If disagreement is treated as conversation rather than combat, people begin behaving accordingly. I don't need everyone here to agree with me.

IN FACT, THAT WOULD BE TERRIBLY BORING.

I just rather like being somewhere where disagreement doesn't automatically require a body to reach for a flamethrower. So far, the Fediverse feels less like an audience being managed... and more like people talking.

I hadn't realised how much I'd missed that.

@3goodthings @DigitalCoup @meditation @economics_that_works

#Fediverse #Mastodon #SocialMedia #OpenWeb #Community #people #flamethrower #ARSEHOLES #talking

Me at my computer in Hobart, Tasmania. This is an AI-prompted image, but it is remarkably accurate. The slimmer body, white T-shirt, white beard, long hair, cream headphones, computer, fire and tree ferns outside the window are all very close to reality. Apparently, this is what 70 looks like from the outside, although I don’t feel that old.

#talking #people #openweb #arseholes #flamethrower #community #socialmedia #mastodon #fediverse

6 Replies

12 Boosts

SewBlue

@sewblue@sfba.social last mo.

@Robinzz3 @3goodthings @DigitalCoup @meditation @economics_that_works @startrek Personally I think it is because vitality (if you can even call it that here) primarily moves through actual social networks and not algorithms. Which is to your point about divisiveness. People aren't being intentionally present content that will anger them, but things they might find interesting.

I have heard that the bigger names, who attract lot of followers, do have corporate social media style issues with jerks. And that somehow it feels more personal on Mastodon. A number of big names have left for that reason.

Robin Evans

@Robinzz3@aus.social last mo.

@sewblue @3goodthings @DigitalCoup @meditation @economics_that_works @startrek

@sewblue I think you've put your finger on something important: things travel here largely because people choose to pass them on, rather than because an algorithm has discovered that making us furious keeps us staring at the screen.

And your point about larger accounts is a useful corrective to my experience. Perhaps some of what I'm enjoying is simply the scale I'm at now.

The Fediverse hasn't changed human nature. 😂

But I do think removing the financial incentive to manufacture outrage changes the conditions in which human nature gets expressed.

🦩 Plastic Garden Fauna 🦩

@OvertonDoors@infosec.exchange last mo.

@Robinzz3 @3goodthings @DigitalCoup @meditation @economics_that_works @startrek

This. More of this.

Robin Evans

@Robinzz3@aus.social last mo.

@OvertonDoors @3goodthings @DigitalCoup @meditation @economics_that_works @startrek

Exactly. Less outrage theatre, more actual conversation.

I could get used to this as well!!

phaedral

@phaedral@beige.party last mo.

@Robinzz3 @3goodthings @DigitalCoup @meditation @economics_that_works @startrek For me, the difference has been twofold. The block and mute features are really wonderful. And I'm very very free with them. It's not really anything more than a convenience, if I find someone is agitating me rather than delighting me, there's a chance they get muted or blocked. But as much as that helps, what I have found on Mastodon with far more frequency than anywhere else, I have found folks who can deescalate from a disagreement and form a positive relationship or interaction. It's almost unheard of on other platforms. But I've had it happen time and again here, Getting off on the wrong foot here doesn't necessarily mean a permanent grudge match. More than anywhere I've been Mastodon seems to have folks who are able to reconsider, and make things better rather than entrenching and pouring fuel on the fire. Fire. Makes me love the place!