In more than 25 years of being online I have figured out a few things about what it takes to get people to pay attention to you on the Internet even though I will never be able to make it work myself. The number one thing you have to do is be negative. Rant, swear, criticize... hate something. I have generally been positive. Certainly not always. No one is positive all the time and if they are it's 99% certain they're faking it.
I have always been mostly ignored and even though I know that's no different from the majority of people it still hurts. On the other hand, there are certain advantages. I am also mostly ignored by the trolls and that's a good thing.
After getting frustrated with blogging and several other social media things I found my place on Twitter. Still not popular but I got enough interaction with other people to make it satisfying. It's true what I considered my most "important" tweets have always been ignored but a few likes and replies every day is way better than I ever got blogging and, more important, I feel like I have a few actual friends there. But now a ridiculous billionaire man-child who never developed emotionally past the age of 3 years is wrecking it all because he, who is constantly in the spotlight, is somehow even more attention starved than I am.
So all the "cool" kids are moving to something called Mastodon. Why Mastodon? Why such a complicated and buggy platform? Maybe there are no other choices? Anyway, no one would follow me even if I knew of somewhere else to go so I follow the crowd. Or I would but Mastodon itself is blocking me from joining. I know it's just technical growing pains and it's stupid to take it personally but being ignored and left out for most of your life affects you that way.
I actually did sign up at Mastodon about six or seven months ago, fooled around with it for a bit but there was no one there I knew and not a lot of interesting activity so I stopped going there and of course I forgot my password. So I click on the Reset Password link and nothing happens. I try again. Nothing happens. I try several times a day for 3 days. Nothing. Someone suggested I create a new account. So I try that. I type in my email address and... it asks for my password. Not a new password but the password for my existing account! It knows my email address and will not let me create a new account without my old account password? What the hell?!
So I don't know. Maybe my online life is over. Maybe I give up on ever again hanging out with my online friends. And honestly, they probably don't like me as well as I like them. All the signs are there; I just never wanted to admit it. I'm annoying and boring.
I guess I'll stick with Twitter as long as it lasts then I don't know. Maybe do something useful with whatever's left of my life. Or more likely just veg out in front the TV steaming crappy movies on Tubi.
Oh I feel you. I'm trying to navigate mastodon in case Twitter jut goes away but I'm finding that (a) there are a lot of people there hostile to "newbies" or to people who aren't so plugged into Linux and similar user-opaque interfaces and they think we're stupid or we're complainers if we ask for help and (b) it's really laggy some times so I will only see things people I follow posted like six hours after they post and (c) most of my twitter friends aren't there. It's horrible and to me it really sucks that one rich man can make things so much worse for so many people just because he wants attention/didn't get told "NO" enough as a kid/wasn't loved enough as a kid/whatever. I've wondered if maybe I just give up on social media altogether but as so many of my formerly-friendly colleagues are either WFH now or are just around less, I get almost no interaction with friendly humans on an average day and that can't be good for me.
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