A Luddite’s Guide To Mastodon

Life in the slow lane

For some reason I could never get my head round Twitter, either from the point of view of how to make it work, or seeing what use it could possibly be. So all the fuss around it has rather passed me by. In fact the more I hear about the company the less I want to have anything to do with it, particularly the treatment of their cleaners, or the dismissal of legions of staff without notice, let alone thanks for their service.

Mastodon

So I thought I would give it a try. I am naturally a bit of a Luddite, and perhaps more suited to anti-social, rather than social media, but it seems a new way to connect, particularly now Medium has its own “instance”. Yes, there is a whole new terminology to get one’s head round. I guess the nearest analogy for an “instance” is a group, and there are lots of these instances/groups which are all connected together. That is my understanding anyway!

Having opened an account it is a bit bewildering at first, particular if one has not used Twitter. There is a “feed” of posts by other people. On the right of the screen you have a choice of local, which is just people in the Medium instance/group, or federated, which is a feed made up of posts from all the different instances/groups. You click on which version of the feed you want to see, local or federated.

My initial impression of the feed is that it is a bit like how you may feel after too many cups of expresso coffee — lots of completely disconnected random thoughts, a sort of stream of consciousness.

The local feed

On the local feed things are fairly slow to change as there are relatively few people in the Medium instance/group, and you may want to follow some fellow Medium members so that their posts start appearing in your feed.

The federated feed

However on the “federated” feed, there are so many posts coming in all the time it is a bit overwhelming for those of us who like life in the slow lane, with new posts arriving every few seconds, a bit like a news desk.

There are a couple of guides which may be worth reading before launching in. This one is a general introduction to the beast, in a Medium article, which is a well-explained overview from a Medium user’s perspective -

Medium’s own guide

General guide to the “Fediverse”

This one is a really comprehensive guide to the whole wider “Fediverse” with loads of links to explore if you want to know more -

Hope that is some help to fellow Luddites!

To join a new Facebook group “Medium Matters” where writers can support each other and share articles.

Mastodon — if I ever get my head around it, you can find me here!