Sorry if this is a dumb but I legit never got into Twitter, and I only use Instagram to follow friends and bands I like.
How do I Mastadon? I’m not being sarcastic, not even a little. Like I literally have absolutely no concept of what I’m supposed to do on it or how to engage with it. Same with pixelfed tbh, like I open it, I see a milliong posts that have no comments or likes, I get confused and then I leave.
Like what do you do? How do you use it? Pretend I’m one of the idiot journalists this post is making fun of, happy to jump on that self-accepting sword!
“Searching for a subject matter that interests you” in Mastodon/PixelFed is all about hashtags. If you’re interested in science fiction, try #scifi. You would do well to either sign up for an instance relating to your interests (for example a dedicated scifi instance, like what startrek.website is for Lemmy), or a general purpose one (mastodon.social) where you can get a better overview. If you find an instance related to your interests later on, consider moving there.
As you search hashtags, you’ll find interesting people. Follow them. You’ll see some interesting posts. Boost them. Adding a star to a post serves no practical function, but it’ll make the poster happy anyway (it’s the same as upvotes here).
Mastodon is based a lot around boosts - if you see someone boosting a lot of content of the type you’re interested in seeing, make sure to follow them and your feed will be populated by content curated by humans, not algorithms.
It’s just a different way to browse current topics that people are discussing. You can follow famous/not famous people, news people, musicians, artists, scientists and so on. You have to take some time to search by name or a hashtag like #music that is interesting for you and then follow those. They typically lead to more people and hashtags of interest that you can follow to build a more personal feed. It’s just a different way to curate the various things that interest you.
The thing is that it’s just another option for people to interact like lemmy/reddit twitter/mastodon pixelfed/facebook etc. Obviously the less popular options have less niche interests. Journalists see that these options can’t be used the same way, and need some work to figure out and navigate, so they critique the different and less polished things they see. If they don’t have what you are looking for, maybe check back in 3-6 months when there are more users and activities. Like lemmy, things are changing quickly right now.
Sorry if this is a dumb but I legit never got into Twitter, and I only use Instagram to follow friends and bands I like.
How do I Mastadon? I’m not being sarcastic, not even a little. Like I literally have absolutely no concept of what I’m supposed to do on it or how to engage with it. Same with pixelfed tbh, like I open it, I see a milliong posts that have no comments or likes, I get confused and then I leave.
Like what do you do? How do you use it? Pretend I’m one of the idiot journalists this post is making fun of, happy to jump on that self-accepting sword!
Mastodon:
Pick a Mastodon instance.
Open it in your web browser, follow the prompts to sign up.
Search for people you want to follow, and add them. Maybe search for subject matter that interests you, and follow people who post about that.
PixelFed:
Pick a PixelFed instance.
Open it in your web browser, follow the prompts to sign up.
Search for people you want to follow, and add them. Maybe search for subject matter that interests you, and follow people who post about that.
To add on this:
“Searching for a subject matter that interests you” in Mastodon/PixelFed is all about hashtags. If you’re interested in science fiction, try #scifi. You would do well to either sign up for an instance relating to your interests (for example a dedicated scifi instance, like what startrek.website is for Lemmy), or a general purpose one (mastodon.social) where you can get a better overview. If you find an instance related to your interests later on, consider moving there.
As you search hashtags, you’ll find interesting people. Follow them. You’ll see some interesting posts. Boost them. Adding a star to a post serves no practical function, but it’ll make the poster happy anyway (it’s the same as upvotes here).
Mastodon is based a lot around boosts - if you see someone boosting a lot of content of the type you’re interested in seeing, make sure to follow them and your feed will be populated by content curated by humans, not algorithms.
Is that essential, though? As long as everybody is federated, it shouldn’t matter, except maybe it will take longer to see some posts.
It’s just a different way to browse current topics that people are discussing. You can follow famous/not famous people, news people, musicians, artists, scientists and so on. You have to take some time to search by name or a hashtag like #music that is interesting for you and then follow those. They typically lead to more people and hashtags of interest that you can follow to build a more personal feed. It’s just a different way to curate the various things that interest you.
The thing is that it’s just another option for people to interact like lemmy/reddit twitter/mastodon pixelfed/facebook etc. Obviously the less popular options have less niche interests. Journalists see that these options can’t be used the same way, and need some work to figure out and navigate, so they critique the different and less polished things they see. If they don’t have what you are looking for, maybe check back in 3-6 months when there are more users and activities. Like lemmy, things are changing quickly right now.
You’re doing it right now.