You say Tweeter, I say Tooter – let’s call the whole thing off!
This is just a quick note to mention my move from Twitter to Mastodon. I had pretty much had enough of Twitter years ago but I kept believing that somehow all the chaos, nonsense, open washing, all of the iterations of Course Hero, corporate-racist-antisemitic echo chambers were all going to be worth it. And I hated how much everyone just accepts that as the culture. I got tired of it. And that was before Twitter was Elon-gated. I remembered that I missed the spirit of community, experimentation, and collegiality that I found in social media in the early days. I am not saying that Mastodon is the answer but it certainly is a non-corporate jumping off point. The point of this post is to point to some articles and tools that I found helpful in understanding this space.
Amanda Siberling’s article on Tech Crunch, “A beginner’s guide to Mastodon, the open source Twitter alternative” capsulized a lot of the information I needed to understand Mastodon and to share it with my faculty. Clive Thompson’s article is also quite useful.
Chris Aldrich’s article “Your Twitter ‘Go Bag’” reminded me to download all of my information from Twitter (and how to do it), and how to find your people in Mastodon.
The way I used to use Twitter (when I was really engaged) was to link up Twitter and this blog. Could I do that with Mastodon? Frankly, I couldn’t care less – I was leaving Twitter one way or another, but Andy Piper’s Glitch page “Examples of different ways to embed Mastodon timelines (and toots) in HTML” has a link to Mastofeed which allows me to create some HTML that I can use in a WordPress widget that lets me put my Mastodon feed on this blog.
Per Axbom’s article “10 Quick Mastodon Tips” was helpful in orienting myself to the space, and I think I will be using this with other new immigrants.
I know there were others. I went to Mastodon earlier but never really did anything with it. I will let you know in this space how things fare. In the meantime, feel free to leave a comment below with any resources you found useful. If you decide to stay and remain a Musketeer, I highly recommend Geshe Langri Tangpa’s “Eight Verses for Training the Mind.”
