I just had an exchange with a friend that I think sheds light on my own use of Mastodon, and I thought I would share.
My friend said that Mastodon must be a tiny community because I'm one of the only people that he knows of who is actually on here.
As evidence for Mastodon being a tiny community, he pointed to the fact that 5 years ago he was hearing about Slack in a number of places, and 12 years ago he needed a Facebook account in order to stay connected with multiple communities.
My friend went on to suggest that Mastodon is really only of general interest as an open source project, that it isn't publicly discussed for its value as a community.
I agreed that the people I know on Mastodon are generally not people that I know elsewhere, and noted that Mastodon is full of iconoclasts.
But the fact that the people I meet on Mastodon are not people that I know elsewhere actually turns out to be a selling point for me.
I really appreciate the *kinds* of people I've been meeting on here.
Lots of interesting ideas being thrown around, and I also have lots of choices about what kinds of subcommunities to connect with.
I realized that, for me, the ability to connect with strangers is one of the selling points of Mastodon.
It's the opposite of Facebook in that regard.
Facebook was the place to be because everyone I knew was on there and it eventually came to feel like the only way to stay connected with friends, family, and coworkers. But I almost never met anyone new on there.
@dynamic I would amend, "only way to stay connected", to, "only way to stay constantly connected". It's a very insidious effect of social networks that we often fail to point out.
The "racist uncle" is no longer just a family holiday annoyance; he now lives with you, or lives with someone you visit frequently. ;-)
@lwriemen
That is real, and is a genuine problem.
I think it's a little bit different from the phenomenon I'm poking at, though. The point I'm making is that even with a positive Facebook experience (which mine generally was, at least until the algorithms narrowed the group of people I was able to interact with to approximately six individuals), Mastodon offers something of value that you can't get on Facebook.