Inertial Invites on Nostr: Ok, so if you're new to the Fediverse, here are the things you should have already ...
Ok, so if you're new to the Fediverse, here are the things you should have already known ten minutes before you made the decision to give it a shot. Frankly, I'm disappointed in you for not knowing these things.
1) Tweets are called "toots" if you're on Mastodon. Not sure if you're on Mastodon? Wait a few minutes and someone will be along to criticize your choice of server, and it'll probably be because you are or are not on Mastodon. You should be on Mastodon, unless you are, in which case why haven't you tried one of the millions of other options with names like FedSocTechBlitz or Icebadger or Q&/-#__$ or a dirty word in Japanese? Don't you know the complex pros and cons of each one by now?
2) Tweets are called "posts" if you're not on Mastodon. Hey, at least we're not calling them "skeets," right? Bluesky is such cringe.
3) You should provide a brief biographical sketch of yourself in your profile. Or you should write nonsense words. One or the other. This establishes your membership in one of the two families of the Fediverse: the Professionals or the shitposting CHUDs. You will regret whichever choice you make, but it's best to get it out of the way.
4) You should also provide an introductory toot which you can pin to your profile. This can be the same thing as your profile with the words changed via thesaurus. You'll want to sound authoritative, or alternately like you've never used a computer before and are deeply confused by everything that's happening to you.
5) You don't have to provide a picture which will be used as your avatar, but if you don't, people will assault you on streetcorners even after you inform that that you're blind. This is traditional.
6) After you've done all that, even if you're sure you still want to give it a go, you will never figure out who to follow. The best thing to do is to follow random people until they say something horrible, which will happen a lot. But until then, you'll want to assemble a rogues gallery of follows. This isn't social media, it's like being thrown into a giant, open-air prison with a bunch of people who have mental illnesses and are seriously passionate about Linux to the point where you're worried. Embrace that by following everyone you see.
7) Unfortunately, you're not going to see anyone when you first show up because, as you will be told about seven trillion times, "there's no algorithm!" You could probably skip the Fediverse completely and just get "there's no algorithm!" tattooed backwards on your forehead so whenever you look in the mirror you'll get the untrammeled delight of the Fediverse without having to own a computer.
8) If you still want to find people to follow, you'll want to hit up the Local and Federated feeds. They're probably accessible to you somehow, but since there are four hundred different ways to access the Fediverse, I can't tell you how to do it in your particular case. It's probably a button. Maybe a lever? Do you have to type some arcane command into a prompt somewhere? A blessing from the Pope and a permission slip from your parents mailed to the country where your server lives? Who can say? That's the wonderful mystery of the Fediverse.
9) By poking random things on your screen, you will eventually wind up in a feed where people actually are. The Local feed, depending on the server you chose at the beginning (a choice which you were assured was not important and which turns out to have been more important than your choice of a spouse, career, and firstborn's name put together), will be either lovely or a toxic cesspit. You'll know pretty quickly which one you got. On a smaller server with fewer active users, you might see a few posts every hour from other people just like you. If you went with mastodon.social, your Local feed will fly by like a roadrunner on amphetamines and will be filled with people just like you, if you are a sex bot or someone who really likes a particular subsector of the universe of anime porn. If you're seeing this toot on your Local feed, chances are good that you've joined a cult of some sort. I'm sorry.
9) The Federated feed is to the Local feed what a fire hose is to a garden hose. There are rules about what shows up in the Federated feed, but no one knows what they are. Basically, the Federated feed is like freebasing the Fediverse directly into your eyeballs. Unless you chose mastodon.social, in which case you won't be able to tell the difference between the Local and Federated feeds and you're probably currently praying for a swift death.
10) Having followed several hundred people totally at random, you may now wonder how you can achieve clout by increasing your follower count. We do not chase clout in the Fediverse and any suggestion otherwise is met with great wailing and gnashing of teeth. So you'll probably want to try Bluesky instead because that's what filthy clout-chasers do. You sicken me! Get out!
11) Still here? You've passed the first test, which is pretending that you're not chasing clout. You can prove this to others by talking about how the Fediverse is different, that real conversations happen here, and that you're just interested in engagement. "Engagement" is what we've all agreed to call "clout." It's confusing, I know, but we do it so that we can prevent most people from enjoying themselves in the Fediverse. Apparently no one told the marketing team, who are still trying to encourage people to join and telling everyone that it's fun here. It's only fun if we can belittle others, so that requires a steady stream of people like you to join, get belittled, and leave, a digital motion which the mavens of Mastodon have figured out how to harvest and turn into cheap energy to power Linux. Linux is an insatiable monster though, so we've got to keep the quota up and keep those accounts churning.
12) If you really want "engagement" you're going to want to produce quality content, by which I mean jokes that you've stolen from other people. That seems to be a surefire way to drive "engagement." But it's fine, because we're not chasing clout. Jokes belong to everyone, man. ✌️☮️
13) You can also post about politics, though that's riskier. If you post too much about politics, people will get annoyed because they're not here to read about politics. If you don't post enough about politics, people will get annoyed because the Fediverse doesn't have good political reporting like Twitter did. You'll want to post exactly the right amount about politics, an amount which is determined by the weight of a block of pure tungsten which is kept in a vault in Switzerland. You can ask to see the block, but they won't let you because it needs to be kept in total darkness so its quantum state changes as little as possible. Its weight is measured by an official who stands in a room next to the vault and guesses really hard in the block's direction. But that's okay because no one knows what the formula for turning that weight into an amount of acceptable political posting is.
14) If you know anything about computers, you have come to the right place because the Fediverse is simply lousy with people who know stuff about computers. There are people who have opinions too. That's fun. You can post about that.
15) It is not, in fact, fun. The people with opinions about computers will make sure it isn't fun. They only have two jobs: form corrosive opinions about computers and destroy fun as if they have an electronic fun-destroying machine. They do. It's called computers.
16) What can you post? Anything really. None of it matters. Virality as such doesn't really exist in the Fediverse because there are about two hundred actual users. Most of them are nice enough. But random luck is pretty much the best you can do. Eventually you'll have a toot "break containment" which is what people say when they deeply regret their choices because a bunch of mouth-breathers from mastodon.social have latched on to a toot like a horde of giant ticks, except ticks won't deliberately misrepresent everything they read. Once that happens, maybe it'll translate into "engagement." Maybe you'll get so much "engagement" that you'll feel like your foray into the Fediverse was such a success that you no longer need to be on the Fediverse at all. Won't that be lonely?
17) You'll also want to "boost" (which is what we can retweeting) other people's toots frequently, because that's how the algorithm figures out what toots are the most popular. I'm kidding of course because as you will probably have been told at least two hundred times since the last time I told you earlier in this very toot, "there's no algorithm!" Aren't you glad there's no algorithm? Because there isn't one.
18) Anyone who says that faves are meaningless is a filthy liar. Faves are how you tell the author that you read their toot and thought it was good, but not good enough to boost it so that others can see it. It's basically the damning with faint praise of the Fediverse. You can hit that star button and know that the only person who'll know you've done it is the author of the toot in question. It's fun to crush their spirits.
19) We do alt text for our photos here. You will get it wrong and people will yell at you, but in fairness it's really easy to do and visually impaired people deserve to be able to yell at someone just like all the rest of us.
20) Content warnings are a thing here as well. You're best off putting everything you write behind a content warning because a lot of people are really passionate about them. But you'll find that posts with content warnings get a fraction of the "engagement" that normal posts do, which is the Universe's way of punishing us for being nice to others.
21) People will talk about "meta" referring to drama between people or servers in the Fediverse which you will not understand. Being involved in fedi meta is a bit like being the person of the day back on Twitter. It's better not to be. Confusingly, people will also talk about "meta" referring to the parent company of Facebook. You'll know it's the latter if you kind of understand what they're talking about.
1) Tweets are called "toots" if you're on Mastodon. Not sure if you're on Mastodon? Wait a few minutes and someone will be along to criticize your choice of server, and it'll probably be because you are or are not on Mastodon. You should be on Mastodon, unless you are, in which case why haven't you tried one of the millions of other options with names like FedSocTechBlitz or Icebadger or Q&/-#__$ or a dirty word in Japanese? Don't you know the complex pros and cons of each one by now?
2) Tweets are called "posts" if you're not on Mastodon. Hey, at least we're not calling them "skeets," right? Bluesky is such cringe.
3) You should provide a brief biographical sketch of yourself in your profile. Or you should write nonsense words. One or the other. This establishes your membership in one of the two families of the Fediverse: the Professionals or the shitposting CHUDs. You will regret whichever choice you make, but it's best to get it out of the way.
4) You should also provide an introductory toot which you can pin to your profile. This can be the same thing as your profile with the words changed via thesaurus. You'll want to sound authoritative, or alternately like you've never used a computer before and are deeply confused by everything that's happening to you.
5) You don't have to provide a picture which will be used as your avatar, but if you don't, people will assault you on streetcorners even after you inform that that you're blind. This is traditional.
6) After you've done all that, even if you're sure you still want to give it a go, you will never figure out who to follow. The best thing to do is to follow random people until they say something horrible, which will happen a lot. But until then, you'll want to assemble a rogues gallery of follows. This isn't social media, it's like being thrown into a giant, open-air prison with a bunch of people who have mental illnesses and are seriously passionate about Linux to the point where you're worried. Embrace that by following everyone you see.
7) Unfortunately, you're not going to see anyone when you first show up because, as you will be told about seven trillion times, "there's no algorithm!" You could probably skip the Fediverse completely and just get "there's no algorithm!" tattooed backwards on your forehead so whenever you look in the mirror you'll get the untrammeled delight of the Fediverse without having to own a computer.
8) If you still want to find people to follow, you'll want to hit up the Local and Federated feeds. They're probably accessible to you somehow, but since there are four hundred different ways to access the Fediverse, I can't tell you how to do it in your particular case. It's probably a button. Maybe a lever? Do you have to type some arcane command into a prompt somewhere? A blessing from the Pope and a permission slip from your parents mailed to the country where your server lives? Who can say? That's the wonderful mystery of the Fediverse.
9) By poking random things on your screen, you will eventually wind up in a feed where people actually are. The Local feed, depending on the server you chose at the beginning (a choice which you were assured was not important and which turns out to have been more important than your choice of a spouse, career, and firstborn's name put together), will be either lovely or a toxic cesspit. You'll know pretty quickly which one you got. On a smaller server with fewer active users, you might see a few posts every hour from other people just like you. If you went with mastodon.social, your Local feed will fly by like a roadrunner on amphetamines and will be filled with people just like you, if you are a sex bot or someone who really likes a particular subsector of the universe of anime porn. If you're seeing this toot on your Local feed, chances are good that you've joined a cult of some sort. I'm sorry.
9) The Federated feed is to the Local feed what a fire hose is to a garden hose. There are rules about what shows up in the Federated feed, but no one knows what they are. Basically, the Federated feed is like freebasing the Fediverse directly into your eyeballs. Unless you chose mastodon.social, in which case you won't be able to tell the difference between the Local and Federated feeds and you're probably currently praying for a swift death.
10) Having followed several hundred people totally at random, you may now wonder how you can achieve clout by increasing your follower count. We do not chase clout in the Fediverse and any suggestion otherwise is met with great wailing and gnashing of teeth. So you'll probably want to try Bluesky instead because that's what filthy clout-chasers do. You sicken me! Get out!
11) Still here? You've passed the first test, which is pretending that you're not chasing clout. You can prove this to others by talking about how the Fediverse is different, that real conversations happen here, and that you're just interested in engagement. "Engagement" is what we've all agreed to call "clout." It's confusing, I know, but we do it so that we can prevent most people from enjoying themselves in the Fediverse. Apparently no one told the marketing team, who are still trying to encourage people to join and telling everyone that it's fun here. It's only fun if we can belittle others, so that requires a steady stream of people like you to join, get belittled, and leave, a digital motion which the mavens of Mastodon have figured out how to harvest and turn into cheap energy to power Linux. Linux is an insatiable monster though, so we've got to keep the quota up and keep those accounts churning.
12) If you really want "engagement" you're going to want to produce quality content, by which I mean jokes that you've stolen from other people. That seems to be a surefire way to drive "engagement." But it's fine, because we're not chasing clout. Jokes belong to everyone, man. ✌️☮️
13) You can also post about politics, though that's riskier. If you post too much about politics, people will get annoyed because they're not here to read about politics. If you don't post enough about politics, people will get annoyed because the Fediverse doesn't have good political reporting like Twitter did. You'll want to post exactly the right amount about politics, an amount which is determined by the weight of a block of pure tungsten which is kept in a vault in Switzerland. You can ask to see the block, but they won't let you because it needs to be kept in total darkness so its quantum state changes as little as possible. Its weight is measured by an official who stands in a room next to the vault and guesses really hard in the block's direction. But that's okay because no one knows what the formula for turning that weight into an amount of acceptable political posting is.
14) If you know anything about computers, you have come to the right place because the Fediverse is simply lousy with people who know stuff about computers. There are people who have opinions too. That's fun. You can post about that.
15) It is not, in fact, fun. The people with opinions about computers will make sure it isn't fun. They only have two jobs: form corrosive opinions about computers and destroy fun as if they have an electronic fun-destroying machine. They do. It's called computers.
16) What can you post? Anything really. None of it matters. Virality as such doesn't really exist in the Fediverse because there are about two hundred actual users. Most of them are nice enough. But random luck is pretty much the best you can do. Eventually you'll have a toot "break containment" which is what people say when they deeply regret their choices because a bunch of mouth-breathers from mastodon.social have latched on to a toot like a horde of giant ticks, except ticks won't deliberately misrepresent everything they read. Once that happens, maybe it'll translate into "engagement." Maybe you'll get so much "engagement" that you'll feel like your foray into the Fediverse was such a success that you no longer need to be on the Fediverse at all. Won't that be lonely?
17) You'll also want to "boost" (which is what we can retweeting) other people's toots frequently, because that's how the algorithm figures out what toots are the most popular. I'm kidding of course because as you will probably have been told at least two hundred times since the last time I told you earlier in this very toot, "there's no algorithm!" Aren't you glad there's no algorithm? Because there isn't one.
18) Anyone who says that faves are meaningless is a filthy liar. Faves are how you tell the author that you read their toot and thought it was good, but not good enough to boost it so that others can see it. It's basically the damning with faint praise of the Fediverse. You can hit that star button and know that the only person who'll know you've done it is the author of the toot in question. It's fun to crush their spirits.
19) We do alt text for our photos here. You will get it wrong and people will yell at you, but in fairness it's really easy to do and visually impaired people deserve to be able to yell at someone just like all the rest of us.
20) Content warnings are a thing here as well. You're best off putting everything you write behind a content warning because a lot of people are really passionate about them. But you'll find that posts with content warnings get a fraction of the "engagement" that normal posts do, which is the Universe's way of punishing us for being nice to others.
21) People will talk about "meta" referring to drama between people or servers in the Fediverse which you will not understand. Being involved in fedi meta is a bit like being the person of the day back on Twitter. It's better not to be. Confusingly, people will also talk about "meta" referring to the parent company of Facebook. You'll know it's the latter if you kind of understand what they're talking about.