— John Pumford-Green 20/12/22 07:39

I recently tried Mastodon - the distributed, not-powered-by-advertising, not-run-by-megalomaniac-billionaires social media platform.

This was after years of “not-using-Twitter”. I didn't use Twitter for a variety of reasons. One was “what's the point of it?” and another was “I don't like AI and Algorithms deciding what I should see” and another was “I ABSOLUTELY HATE ADVERTISING”.

I'd looked at Mastodon a few times over the last year or so, but thought “what's the point of it?” and “everyone else is on Twitter anyway”.

Then Elon Musk took over Twitter and there seemed to be a mass exodus of people, and Mastodon was where they were going.

So I set up a Mastodon account and started to explore.

Initially it seemed to make sense - I had an account on an “instance” centred around the radio hobby, and most of the postings were interesting (or at least “on topic”) and it looked like it was possible to get involved, make “friends” and share experiences, and even post/read/enjoy the odd off-topic item.

I couldn't shake off the annoyance I felt that many of the posts were references to things still going on “over in the other place”, “on the Bird Site” etc. Lots of Twitter-in-jokes and references, that made no sense to people who had no interest or previous connection with Twitter, and were probably also annoying to people who had “escaped” Twitter and were enjoying the new atmosphere of Mastodon.

Carrying over old Twitter baggage started to dominate (as I saw things) as more and more “refugees” made the jump.

Endless “have I done the right thing?” or “I'm here now, what do I do?”, or “This doesn't work like Twitter, I don't like X, Y or Z”.

… then the floods of “memes” referencing ongoing Twitter happenings…

In my mind if you leave Twitter and join Mastodon you don't need to keep dragging over Twitter-related posts, jokes, comments, memes.

I started trying to filter out content I didn't want to wade through, stuff that made no sense to me (as a non-Twitter user), then I started un-following people that persisted in filling up the timeline(s) with such stuff.

Then I thought “What's the point of this?”

I'd managed perfectly well without Twitter all these years.

I was now spending more time trying to “clean up” my Mastodon timeline & home feed than I was happy with.

So I decide “No. It's not for me”

and Deleted my Mastodon.radio account (as well as the account I'd set up but not yet used on Mastodonapp.uk)

Enough was enough.

I'm just not a “social media microblogging” kind of person, I suppose.