My experience with the Fediverse has only been through Mastodon, through which I struggled to find a community I really gelled with. Either it was supper overwhelming with meme posts or NSFW, or it was too chill to the point of nothing. Or, it was hyperfocused like FOSS/Linux and became uninteresting after awhile. May try again, but I think I will explore the other fedisites like Plemora or Calckey to see if I like it better.
I love the pace of a forum. I grew up primarily with GameFAQS and some lucid dreaming forum, and honestly it was very formative in teaching me how to write and use critical thinking skills, as well as how to respond to a variety of temperaments. I stopped participating in online forums awhile ago, and while I loved Reddit as a resource, I never felt inspired to participate. In the same way, there are an incredible number of forums dedicated to a certain topic, and are extremely valuable, it would be annoying to make an account for all the things I am interested in.
I like what lemmy is becoming. Glad to find system that makes interacting with people enjoyable.
Lemmy and Reddit promote engagement, discourse and even arguments… ok, especially arguments.
Mastodon feels like a list of billboards that I am disconnected from.
“Oh, that’s news”
But no one talks between eachother about anything. I almost feel like the nature of the layout of Twitter and it’s alternatives are almost by design to make the users a little more self serving.
Mastodon has every user standing on a soapbox yelling at crowds, Lemmy is more of a public forum.
Yeah, this micro-blog approach is so one-sided. Some people want engagement, but most people are only looking for agreement.
@DidacticDumbass @BlinkerFluid Most of the Mastadon “toots” I engage with are multi-part threads. One one hand, that suggests that longer posts encourage engagement. On the other hand, they demonstrate that Mastadon is not entirely devoted to “micro” posts.
It does get awkward trying to follow a thread, especially when it branches out to islands of discussion.
The problem feels a lot more topological, like the micro posts are fine, but the view is bad. Reading the discussions takes more effort than it should, they need s different organizational structure than the collapsed vertical representation.