Comment by rmoriz
4 days ago
It‘s worthwhile to mention „clones“ because Mastodon/Fediverse and bsky turned into the same negativity sinkholes just with a different group. Builders and creators quickly became the minority, as it happend on Twitter within 3-4 years after launch.
I'll grant that.
I am active on Mastodon, Bluesky, and Tumblr but not X. On all of those platforms I am selective about who I follow (e.g. said anything about Trump in the last 20 posts I won't follow you, posted an image with angry text in it, I won't follow you) and quick with the block button. In the case of the first two I get a feed which is really cozy, the third has way too much AI slop (fake cat videos!) which would get the smackdown on the other too.
I really enjoy sharing photos on that kind of platform as well as the kind of links I post to HN. I did have an image that was a breakout hit the other day which got me a burst of follows and it was really depressing that 95%-ish of those new followers are people who are apoplectic about #uspol. There are just so many of those people and they post so much and they always say the same things and I find it emotionally contagious.
I am bothered less by the right wing equivalent of those people because I don't go on X, I live in one of the most liberal towns in America. They bother me less because I can easily dismiss the people who are bleating "free speech", "free speech", "freespeech" as NPC minions of Peter Thiel [1] whereas I agree with the followers of Heather Cox Richardson about the problem but think their solution is so wrong and actually destructive to their cause that they are effectively working for the Koch Organization for free and for me that stings.
[1] ... although I know I shouldn't.
1. Follow people who deliver. Deliver code, arts, thoughts, ideas, change.
2. Ignore the cultists of all sides, ignore the people who fall into every rage bait trap or just want to start a cult. Almost nobody is right or wrong all the time except people who outright hate all people and have no empathy.
3. Even when you follow a person, treat them with a big grain of salt. Everyone is an influencer, many have some underlying agenda or questionable views. Be reluctant to share, be reluctant of trusting in topics people are not known for. Your three letter guy sure knows A LOT about code, business and getting things done, however his view on politics may be dubious. You need to be able to accept that both at the same time.