Hello, Mastodonians. I'm wondering: do you have a strategy for keeping up a high level of interaction with people on the web while keeping things pleasant and positive? Are there things/places you avoid or emphasize? What do you do to put your voice out there, but try to reduce negative and ultimately pointless arguments and interactions?
Hi Andrew, I guess that there is no real answer to your questions. People discuss. I have the feeling that people on Mastodon are quite #positivethinking, particularly compared to #twitter. However, there are discussions which are more confronting and less pleasant such as #forkoff
@GerryT My thinking isn't really fully formed about what I'm asking, or what I'm looking for. I just want to be less grumpy, but still online :)
@awhite @GerryT just choose your battles. Leave those that devolve. I've actually have had quite constructive discussions both here and on birdsite. We started by disagreeing and we probably still disagreed by the end of the thread but I think it helped gain perspective and maybe shift positions slightly, at least for me.
In case you know French I can recommend the book "Le Liseur du 6h27" by Jean-Paul #Didierlaurent (there might be an English translation)
A quite smart book that is very nice to read.
You mean just lurking like the two grandpas at the #muppetshow. They just listen and are amused.
@awhite Haha, "less-grumpy-but-still-online" made my day. I don't know whether it is a trend or permanent, but the way how people interact on #socialmedia lately is filled with hatred and threats. Very weird. Here over in Europe, someone just writes that there is an issue with #socialpolicy and some others immediately yell #refugees . Quite nasty.
@GerryT Yeah, what prompted me to write this is getting yelled at for having the audacity to say that the law believes it is the job of a driver not to door a cyclist, not the cyclist to not get doored.
@awhite If someone gets rude at a discussion like that (whose fault is it if a cyclist gets doored), then there really is the only option to stop discussion.
By the way, a good cyclist cannot get doored ;-) Just see:
https://mastodon.social/@atomjack604/100098077870091644
@GerryT WOW! I don't think I'm doing that with my daughter in a trailer behind me. Or, heck, at all.
@awhite I also think that Mastodon is a good place. Twitter has gotten quite nasty. The idea of local and federated timelines is IMHO a good idea. Mastodon is quite small (and I also haven't quite found my community yet), but growing at a pace of ~14,000 users per day at the moment. Just see https://dashboards.mnm.social/d/000000001/mastodon-network-overview?refresh=1h&orgId=1
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Hi, @GerryT! I get that, and I understand. Mastodon is a good place, although I haven't quite found my community here yet. But I find that things devolve super-quickly in the broader 'net. I wonder how folks deal?