I’ve been spending a lot of time on Mastodon the past few months, and I’m pretty much done with Twitter (as I type, Semiphemeral is working away on deleting my tweets). Even if a certain billionaire hadn’t made the place into even more of an alt-right cesspit, I’d already started realizing how looking at Tweetdeck or scrolling through Twitter affected my mood. Not in any kind of good way.
I’m not the first to realize that — and I’m pretty sure I won’t be the last — but a conversation with someone on Mastodon this evening helped me see an easy way to sum up the difference (we were talking about music, in particular late ’80’s, early ’90’s stuff).
Emily Dickinson wrote:
“There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –”
Natalie Merchant wrote (and sang!):
“These are the days you might fill with laughter until you break
These days you might feel a shaft of light
Make its way across your face
And when you do you’ll know how it was meant to be
See the signs and know their meaning
It’s true”
That verse is the closing one of “These are Days”, possibly the most joy-inducing song I can think of.
Twitter’s light feels like Dickinson (oppressive), Mastodon’s light is more Merchant-y.
Stay with me, I can make this clearer, I promise!
Anyone who has ever suffered from depression can recognize themselves in Dickinson’s description of oppressive light. The rest of the poem is about an invisible ailment, sent on the air, that robs things of meaning, or changes their meaning. She could have been writing about the Twitter algorithm, engineered to reward provocation, twisting and turning words to inflict maximum engagement, often by enraging people. Space Karen the Second (Melon Husk) knows this, which is why he’s reacting to people leaving Twitter by reactivating the accounts of provocateurs and hate-mongers to try to get eyes back on the site and make their MAU numbers look better.
In contrast to Dickinson, Merchant is singing about joy. It’s a song that hits even stronger on the other side of a severe depression. It’s reduced me to tears more than once when I’ve felt the warmth of the sun on my face and known I was okay. I was meant to be. I haven’t got a cloud over me anymore. I’m not having to filter through layers of terrible to find the decent and kind people sharing a space with me.
Mastodon is like that. It can be bewildering, but usually not in a bad way. I signed up first in 2017, because it was new, because I already wasn’t Twitter’s biggest fan, I dunno. I followed some people, hopped in and out, didn’t post much, didn’t really get it. In April of this year, I went back. Followed some more people, started liking and boosting posts. Had chats with people. Found myself going back more and more. With the influx from Twitter, I decided to move out of the big mastodon.social instance and into a smaller one that’s “for” LGBTQ+ peeps in tech. The “for” is in quotes because neither is a prerequisite, but it’s the perfect home for me. I’ve had more genuine engagement in 7 months of Mastodon than I had in over 13 years on Twitter. I took part in my first #MovieBowl and loved the snark and gentle smack-talk; I follow people who post terrible jokes (Dad jokes, absurd jokes, none of them targeted at people); I’ve talked movies, and music, and technology with people I’ve never met; I’ve admired some very handsome cat pics; and it’s all been lovely.
I say that knowing that I write from a place of privilege. I’m a queer white person, in a largely white environment, and I have not had any of the hassles that BIPOC folks have had on Mastodon.
And hassles aplenty there have been. For example, I liked a post from someone talking about how she had stopped reading books by white men (me too!) years ago, only to find out the next day that she had been suspended because someone reported that same post. Reported for IDK what, being anti reading books by middle-aged white dudes?! What in the white fragility?! The suspension was overturned, but understandably the poster (who was — surprise!– not white or male) did not want to come back to a platform that was willing to treat her like that.
One of the problems with volunteer moderation is that there are screw-ups like this. And it’s far from the only one. A trans journalist was suspended from journa.host for using “uncivil language” to someone who regularly writes anti-trans articles.
There’s a disturbing amount of hate directed at Black people on Mastodon, and as a result there is no sign (yet!) of a community equivalent to Black Twitter emerging on the platform. Mastodon is allegedly all about community, so racists making community-building next to impossible should be yeeted off servers, and/or the servers hosting them should be defederated. We know this. But how many BIPOC people will be driven away before those protections kick in? Too many.
The only thing that pisses me off about Mastodon is that not everyone gets to have the chilled-out friendly environment I experience. People are Emily Dickinson-ing all over BIPOC peoples’ Natalie Merchant vibes and they need to stop. We need the racism and hate about as much as we need an algorithm (which is to say, we DO NOT need it).
If you come to Mastodon, or if you’re already there, here’s a baker’s dozen things you can do to help make things better for everyone:
- Don’t be an asshole.
- If you’re a TERF, a SWERF, a crypto-bro, or a garden variety racist, Mastodon is probably not the place for you. Try Gab, Parler, or Truth Social instead.
- Unlearn the enragement=engagement habit.
- Find and follow BIPOC accounts.
- Boost posts from BIPOC folks to help their posts spread through the Fediverse – that’ll help others find and follow them, which helps create a community.
- If you see someone being a racist asshat, report them. Don’t rely on someone else to do it.
- Report before you block so admins know about what’s happening.
- Use content warnings when it makes sense to – but don’t hide negative lived experiences behind them. Content warnings are opt-in, they’re not there to protect white Mastodon from ugly truths about systemic racism.
- Always use alt-text on your images, so people with screen readers get a description. It takes 30 seconds to do, you can add more info (your cat’s name, pls), and it’ll mean more people are likely to boost your post, if you care about that.
- Reply to posts! It’s how you get to know people!
- Follow people from your local instance and from further afield – and go for quality over quantity. It’s not a numbers game.
- Be yourself, unless your self is jerk, in which case try to be a nicer version of yourself.
- Don’t use a cross-poster with Twitter, you can have independent existences with very little effort and you won’t really engage on Mastodon if you’re never actually there.
If you do come to Mastodon, you can find me by putting @Djuna@tech.lgbt into the search bar. If you’re already there, say hi!