A Revelation About Friendship

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I've realised something about why it could be harder to make friends these days.

I've been on social media for over 10 years, mostly Twitter recently. Social media feeds us information via algorithms doesn't it, we are passively sitting there looking at things we are fed, things that are put in front of us.

Recently I moved to Mastodon because the Twitter algorithm is hiding me and my friends from each other (thanks Elon!) On Mastodon it is federated, there are lots of little instances interacting, instead of one big company deciding what we should and shouldn't see.

I noticed several of my Twitter friends can't cope with Mastodon, they literally don't know what to do. I had to point out that Mastodon is all about people, connections and conversations. You have to 'go out there' and follow people you like the look of, click on hashtags to find people with similar interests. You have to be proactive, not passive.

So I've realised humans have been trained to be passive, sitting back and waiting for things to happen. They won't go out there and make friends because their brains have been trained by algorithms to passively consume things. So no wonder we find it difficult to make friends: NT people are being passive, so are ND people and that doesn't work.

That is why I like Mastodon, it's retraining my brain back to being human again. I'm actually having normal conversations with people, I'm not afraid of anyone being aggressive to me, there are few trolls or disruptive people there.

I've been thinking about trying that out.

But anyways, I've never personally bothered to try and have friends that I interact with on multiple websites. It just kind of means that I have to be very careful about what I say beyond not being very specific about where I'm located and who I am in real life. People are on the major social networking sites for a reason, they don't want to be bothered with different fora and with having to keep up with different places.

Personally, that's why I prefer site specific communities as I have the option of leaving without having to start completely from scratch with socializing.

Mastodon is great. That's my only one now.

I've given up on Twitter, it's impossible to navigate and people are aggressive. I left Facebook years ago and never joined anything like Instagram and TikTok or whatever they are. Too much hassle to keep up with people who don't really give a toss about me.

But those sites owned by one big company have trained us to be passive consumers, letting things happen to us instead of having to take action ourselves.

I bet that's why people in Britain, and probably other countries, are too apathetic to take on the system and get rid of the malevolent government.

That's not how I personally use Twitter.

Typically, I don't even look at the home page. Instead, I keep a collection of hashtags that I check semi-regularly. I've made a list of links to most of them on this page.

Also, Twitter does provide a list of the people you follow, so, if you want to check in on specific people, you can always look there.

Also on Twitter we have a list of people we've exchanged PM's with. I occasionally check those people's accounts also.

But you're saying most people on social media don't bother to check in on specific people, not even their close friends?


Question about Mastodon: Can you provide any guidance on how to select one of these little instances to put my account on?


As noted above, I'm "proactive" in the above sense even on Twitter.


I think old-fashioned message board forums like Wrong Planet are better than social media in terms of facilitating friendships and creating a sense of community.


That's good to hear.

I've considered Mastodon but never actually used it, mainly because I'm stuck at the very first step of picking an instance to sign up on.

Yes, it seems that way on Twitter for me. I tweet all sorts of things e.g. recently I had covid. Recently my mother went to hospital. I tweet for special occasions like Easter etc. But hardly anyone even noticed.

I have some really good friends on Twitter but none of them see my tweets, it seems, just the odd one comes to look at my page every so often. My feed is full of people I don't know or adverts. People don't seem to see my replies to Tweets for weeks, which is a bit pointless when it's a current situation.

I've seen lots of people making the same complaint as me.

Very, very different to how it used to be on Twitter where I saw my friends' tweets every day. I could indeed go to each friend's page and reply but that's 400 people! I just haven't got the time to do that.

Whereas Mastodon all the toots come up naturally and everyone sees everyone. If you press the Bell sign, you actually get to see the friend's toots. If you press the Bell on Twitter you still don't see their tweets!

The only way I had a nice time on Twitter was to padlock my account to keep trolls and bots out. I don't have to do that on Mastodon.

You can join Mastodon.Social, that's the one I'm on. But it doesn't make any difference which one you join because everyone sees everyone.

Yes, I used to love Twitter but it's done right downhill.

I agree about Message boards- I see the same people every day and there are moderators to keep us in order.

mastodon.social/@mrpieceofwork