mastodon is hateful, you should hate mastodon more
i checked the discovery page of bear and saw a post titled "Mastodon users hate everyone and everything". ya, i'm good links to another blog post of the same title by blogger korin.
seeing how this made the front page, it would seem this is a popular opinion. but i'm feeling contrarian today and want to push back. i'm probably not making a lot of friends with this as my first bear blog post, but hey, i've never been an easy person to like.
maybe i'm in a bubble, but does mastodon really have the same level of vitriol as a place like x? sure, we can talk about these posts about omarchy and whatever. but really, if you say you use omarchy on mastodon, most likely nobody is going to say anything, in fact, the other omarchy users are probably more likely to come out because i doubt anyone that dislikes omarchy follows the omarchy hashtag. i read these posts more as venting than some kind of targeted hate mob.
virality just doesn't work the same way on a chronolical feed than it does on an algorithmic one. when a trend takes off, it's because people are reposting, repeating, and talking about it of their own volition. the negativity on mastodon is more of a reflection of people being generally unhappy than something to do with how mastodon is designed. i think this is a reflection of the current times we're in and not mastodon as a technology.
i also wanted to respond to this line specifically from ya, i'm good:
Not everything has to be about Linux and politics and issues but humans cycle through this no matter which social network we go to.
to be fair, i get exhausted with the constant open source and politics talk too, and i'm a linux user whose political opinions more or less align with the mastodon community. i would like to hear more about my other interests too. but i can't help but feel like this is a little unfair. the fediverse is propped up by open source technology, there is enthusiasm for the activitypub protocol as an ethical alternative to corporate social media. yes, of course it attracts open source people.
anyway, i encourage anyone who thinks this way to read pandora's vox by carmen hermosillo. i don't think mastodon is unique, and in fact, this problem goes back a very long time. my argument is that mastodon, and activitypub is a step in the right direction, even if it isn't perfect. decentralized social media means decentralized moderation, which means it's important to choose your instance wisely. for now, while the community is small, everything kinda looks the same, but with scale, i think the merits of activitypub will shine through.
my last argument is about the times we're in. i don't think you can escape negativity in the 2020s so long as the world is falling apart, technofascist are taking over, the environment is collapsing, and everyone's broke. i saw an article from the new york times about negative comments on the chinese internet, in spite of the chinese government wanting to maintain a facade of positivity online. this is a global trend, and extends outside the internet, but won't last forever.
so, without rambling for too long, i think it's a little unfair to mastodon as a technology, and unfair to the good aspects of the mastodon community to just bail out entirely. in a way, that attitude is how we got into this mess in the first place.