Can we please remember to talk about things on the fediverse besides the fediverse itself? ( kbin.social )

Having spent a lot of time on Mastodon... There are tons of people there talking about federated and self-hosted services, software freedom, censorship, encryption, tech regulation... A very narrow range of topics directly surrounding the fediverse get a lot of attention.

But nobody talks about anything else. Nobody goes to Instagram to talk about Instagram, nobody goes to Tiktok to talk about Tiktok, nobody goes to Facebook (at all). People use social media to either talk to their friends or talk about their hobbies and interests.

And if your hobby is tech, that's fine, enjoy. I like tech too. But please, if you have anything else to say, say it. The fediverse will never appeal to the masses if we don't embrace a wide variety of hobbies and interests.

We need people here talking about cooking. We need people here talking about fashion. We need people here talking about immigration policy. We need people here talking about everything people enjoy!

Yes, if you go to /m/fashion right now, it's... barely there. You're not going to get a ton of conversation when you post there. But that's not the point. The point is to build out the community, so that, a year from now, as more and more people attempt to post and engage, there is a conversation. There's a reason to be on the fediverse besides the meta circlejerk over how great the fediverse could be in theory.

This is the "content" people are craving. Find or start a magazine for your city, or your town, or your country. Write a post. Share posts from your favorite blogs. Comment on something, if you have anything to say at all. Share a youtube video—yes, a youtube video, I know, youtube sucks, but at least it gives us a path to a community here.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@kbin.social avatar

You are missing the point that while you are free to do as you please, others also enjoy that same freedom. I don't WANT to make posts about fashion, cooking, politics, or non-techie things, but if you do, then by all means, please do that? Be the change that you would like to see in the world, and all that? I hope you find your bliss.

While I am at it though, "nobody talks about anything else" is objectively false - it is a "feels like" statement that falls prey to the hyperbolic fallacy that your POV is the only one that matters. In point of fact though, there are TONS of such discussions happening, right now, all across the Fediverse! Granted, probably not at the frequency that you want, or perhaps not as easily discoverable as you wanted. Have you considered that Reddit or Twitter or Facebook etc. may legit serve your needs better at the moment, and that's okay too?

For fantastic artwork here though, check out magazines such as m/[email protected], or here's a post sharing a youtube video with nice music. For cooking, I see THOUSANDS of members making THOUSANDS of comments across MANY different places: here's a comprehensive list of those across all of kbin.social - e.g. m/food has 2243 members and 2209 posts, and m/[email protected] has >1k comments (looks like concentrated mostly in a few posts such as https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/71429/What-do-you-eat-that-other-people-think-is-odd). Surely people might even talk about politics here, a tiny bit?:-P

And now we both are breaking your rule: discussing things about the fediverse. This place is for those with an early-adopter mindset: we don't have daddy spez over here "taking care of us", so we must build our own things. Thus, we often resort to talking about actions that involve that process - which I for one don't think is a bad thing? It makes us better, to have these civil conversations about how to make things better moving forward! Although I think your post is poorly written, using inflationary emotional language that misses several points. Even so, I am absolutely LOVING how the comment section here isn't full of harassers saying things like "U SUK", but instead people offering constructive feedback, both positive and negative. To me, THAT is the difference between this place vs. Reddit that makes me enjoy being here more than there. Even though, admittedly yes, it does have FAR less content, and it is all of a biased nature (towards the topics that we here enjoy posting about).

Deathsauce ,
@Deathsauce@kbin.social avatar

Some folks really don't understand they can absolutely get what they want out of the fediverse, they're that accustomed to the limits of the more mainstream options. It's whatever they want it to be. If you're tired of not seeing enough of something, there's nothing stopping you from creating your own instance or a community within a pre-existing instance and rallying others to engage. You're always bound to find someone with a few similar interests around.

It will never grow or change if nobody is willing to directly participate in what they wish to see grow or change.

danhakimi OP ,

I don't WANT to make posts about fashion, cooking, politics, or non-techie things, but if you do, then by all means, please do that?

I didn't ask you to do those things, specifically. What kinds of hobbies do you have? Talk about those. If your topics are all tech-focused, that's fine, keep talking about those, but I'm really hoping I see people here talk more about pomeranians and nail polish, even though I'm not into either, because those topics will engage people who are into those things.

And now we both are breaking your rule: discussing things about the fediverse.

I think you misread my post. I did not say people should not talk about the fediverse, I just think we should post about other things, too. Especially if we want to see the fediverse succeed, we need more than just the meta-conversation.

OpenStars ,
@OpenStars@kbin.social avatar

I do actually:-)

Although the statement that:

nobody talks about anything else

is a direct quote from your post. We ARE talking about other things, just again, perhaps not at the frequency that you would like, or it being as discoverable as you would like.

I did not like how you worded your post, as if we were not, when we ARE - and I gave examples of that happening, thousands and thousands and thousands of times all across the fediverse.

If you want to take responsibility for the exact words that you said that may have mislead people into thinking that you are a Karen who is telling people what they "need" to do, then I offered my feedback in case that would be helpful. Fwiw, I do think you had a point, buried in there somewhere, I just think it is hard to find b/c your post had so many objectively false statements - "feels like" wording that if I stretch out really hard I could maybe guess at what you might have meant? (but which if you are honest with yourself, I hope you can see are factually incorrect)

And mixed in along with the false statements are the extremely obvious ones like:

People use social media to either talk to their friends or talk about their hobbies and interests.

I mean... yeah?

Admittedly, yes fashion does seem to be a neglected topic, but you cannot force people to create content for your amusement? Maybe make a post on Reddit about this place, targeted to fashion enthusiasts and gently advise them that this place exists too if they would want to come here? Or start posting there yourself, every single day and maybe multiple times a day, to help attract other like-minded individuals?

Also, why pick on fashion, but then add on cooking, as if it is the same - isn't that cherry-picking your details? Also:

We need people here talking about immigration policy.

But again, WE ARE - here's an article that is not even 20 minutes old yet.

TLDR: your post came across as telling others what to do, while not wanting to lead by example and actually do any of it yourself. Why not DO IT, rather than ask for all that work to be simply done for you? Again, I have no idea what thoughts were in your head as you wrote that, I'm simply saying that this is how your words strike me. Especially the statements that are outright falsehoods.

But if you are not interested in knowing the effects of your words on others, then I am sorry to have bothered you. Fwiw, I do think you meant well.

nicetriangle ,
@nicetriangle@kbin.social avatar

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    danhakimi OP ,

    A ton of the artists I follow on IG

    You missed my point. They're not on IG to bitch about IG, they're on IG to talk about art and they're bitching about IG on the side. They're ostensibly there to share their art, and that's why you follow them, right?

    And yeah, some people go there to teach you how to be an influencer, but we're all aware that they irredeemably suck.

    nicetriangle ,
    @nicetriangle@kbin.social avatar

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    danhakimi OP ,

    I don't think most people who are new to the fediverse really want to see three dozen threads about the fediverse as they scroll. I couldn't possibly convince somebody to join the fediverse to talk about fashion, because there's nobody here talking about fashion, it's like going to a baseball stadium to talk about library science.

    People are going to Threads instead. When I point out how shitty Threads is and how people should use Mastodon instead, they say, "you're right! Threads is shitty! I'm gonna go use threads." Because threads is a social network and mastodon is a theory.

    moopet ,
    @moopet@kbin.social avatar

    In my experience which is worth one (1) datapoint, people talk about all sorts of stuff.

    Yes, people do talk about the fediverse as part of it, but usually it's about how we can make it better rather than how our corporate overlords have made it worse.

    And I'd say that fediverse metacontent is less than 1% of my feed, so it's not universal, it's very much down to how you set things up.

    Places like kbin will get more because they're newer. I'm not on Threads or Blue sky or whatever but I imagine a lot of the chat there is about their own shiny new thing as well.

    HeinousTugboat ,

    Of the top 10 posts currently on my front page, 2 are about the Fediverse, 1 is about Kbin specifically, and the other 7 are completely different topics including politics, space, video games and art.

    Maybe you should look for magazines/communities other than /m/fediverse if you want to talk about things other than the fediverse.

    danhakimi OP ,

    Of the top 10 posts currently on my front page, 2 are about the Fediverse, 1 is about Kbin specifically, and the other 7 are completely different topics including politics, space, video games and art.

    Is this on /all? I did see some non-fediverse posts there, but like... a few of them were specifically from @196, which... the name of that magazine is an obscure reference to an inside joke from reddit, and the content is basically just, what if there was a second @memes. It's not pulling people in.

    I did see one cool post about Persian Rugs, though, I liked that.

    Maybe you should look for magazines/communities other than /m/fediverse if you want to talk about things other than the fediverse.

    I've spent a lot of time there, scrolling through them and searching for the ones I want. And it's not that the ones I want don't exist, but nobody posts or comments there. I posted to some of them, but there's no conversation to be had. I commented where I could, but I'm afraid half of those people signed in for a day and then left when nothing was happening.

    HeinousTugboat ,

    Is this on /all?

    No, this was on /sub, and I've been aggressively curating my subscriptions and blocking things I don't have any interest in.

    Even looking now on /all with incognito, though, there's only 2 even about Lemmy. I do see a few from 196. There's posts about atheism, random tips from @youshouldknow, a Cosplayer, quite a few memes and shitposts, some political content about Florida, a nice flower, movie news, a couple antiwork posts, an article about a new Alzheimer's drug.

    It's just not all about the Fediverse. Is it a popular topic? Hell yeah it is, especially considering Threads literally released yesterday, and the API blocks from Reddit are just now rolling out. It's not just popular, it's timely and current too. As those things age, it'll come up less.

    I'm afraid half of those people signed in for a day and then left when nothing was happening.

    I mean, sure. There's been days where I haunted Kbin/Lemmy then left. But currently, there's very little else that fills the gap of Reddit beyond this. So I keep coming back, and I keep talking. That's how it grows.

    general_kitten ,

    Be the change you want to see, start posting about things you want to see here.

    danhakimi OP ,

    I did and I have, here and on mastodon, but I can't affect this change alone.

    SouthernCanadian ,

    Most of the posts I see are not about the fediverse. This one is though.

    danhakimi OP ,

    Most of my posts are not about the fediverse. This one got attention, because /m/fediverse is one of the only active magazines here.

    HeartyBeast ,
    @HeartyBeast@kbin.social avatar

    The irony of this post is palpable.

    osarusan ,

    Complaining in m/fediverse that people are talking about the fediverse...

    danhakimi OP ,

    This post is not a complaint. It's a reminder.

    PabloDiscobar ,
    @PabloDiscobar@kbin.social avatar

    Have you ever been on a social network under construction? The first people joining are the geeks who talk about geek stuff and the geek stuff now is the fediverse and microservers. It has always been like this.

    We don't need anything. We discuss based on interests. Talking for filling blank space is what led reddit to what it has become.

    Don't be in such a hurry to see your network filled with people talking for the sake of talking. We will come to this point and this will be the moment when we leave.

    danhakimi OP ,

    Have you ever been on a social network under construction? The first people joining are the geeks who talk about geek stuff and the geek stuff now is the fediverse and microservers. It has always been like this.

    The fediverse has been like this for years. For... What, a decade? It did not take that long for Reddit users to start talking about their hobbies. I remember a lively community for my undergrad school where people discussed events, classes, student government, the schools' governance structure, all sorts of shit, that was in... 2012? Very active for a very small niche. Much more active then than /m/nyc is now. Much, much, much more active.

    I'm not in a hurry. My mastodon account is six years old, and there's still nobody there talking about anything, I have found about 12 accounts I wanted to follow — half of them are software projects or software freedom organizations, and half of them are inactive. I go there, put up a post, none of my ~300 followers see it, because none of them check Mastodon, because it's a complete ghost town.

    I've been extremely patient. It's about damn time the fediverse started to happen.

    nicetriangle ,
    @nicetriangle@kbin.social avatar

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    danhakimi OP ,

    The fediverse has gone from 0 to 0.4 in the last ~6 months. Again, the fashion communities still don't exist. The cooking communities are still pretty fucking small. There are not enough animal gifs. People who come here see it as empty, see people all discussing the same narrow range of topics, and leave. There's nobody to follow on Mastodon. I've been on Mastodon, specifically, for over six years. I got really excited when people started talking about it on Twitter, but I still haven't found more than a dozen accounts, and I still have zero engagement, because the fediverse still barely exists.

    nicetriangle ,
    @nicetriangle@kbin.social avatar

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    danhakimi OP ,

    I'm posting on the existing fashion communities I've found. I've posted plenty about fashion on mastodon as well. It takes more than one person actually doing these things. So here I am, constructively encouraging people who care about the fediverse to use it. I'm sorry you don't appreciate that.

    PabloDiscobar ,
    @PabloDiscobar@kbin.social avatar

    What you should appreciate is the number of argumented answers you had to your question with so few one liners made of "Dan pleeease". Followed by the inevitable clickbait articles. This will probably not last.

    iorale ,
    @iorale@lemmy.fmhy.ml avatar

    All of this.
    A friend of mine always tells me this is what keeps them from really enjoying it and I agree, the topics have a very “elitist” feeling, almost like if anything mundane just might be ignored or shunned.

    spaduf ,
    @spaduf@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    For folks who agree with this sentiment, on Mastodon at least you can set up a temporary filter for fediverse stuff to have it all hidden. Not sure what your options are on Lemmy except maybe leave the fediverse subs like this. It would be nice to have a temporary mute feature for communities so you wouldn’t have to remember to resub after the drama-of-the-week has died down

    Ragnell , (edited )
    @Ragnell@kbin.social avatar

    I think it's a self-selection. To join the Fediverse, you usually need to be aware enough of social media culture to find out about it. So you get a bunch of people on social media who like talking about social media and what's going on. I mean, Mastodon is full of weird hobbyists in the hashtags, but during migrations we get slammed with talk about social media.

    We do need more of the hobby boards to be populated. The gaming boards, /m/gaming, [email protected], are pretty active but the niche boards like /m/GirlGamer are still quiet. !cat is pure joy and very active.

    I think it would be nice to keep the social media talk to relevant boards. We've been flooding the tech and internet and fediverse boards with threads about Threads, maybe we should make a community like /m/Reddit or /m/Twitter specifically FOR those conversations about Threads and let /m/tech and /m/internet talk about the large amount of other stuff going on.

    danhakimi OP ,

    Wait, what's the trick here? your !cat link worked, but /m/ clearly isn't doing anything, and [email protected] didn't do anything... how do you get it to auto-link?

    Ragnell ,
    @Ragnell@kbin.social avatar

    @danhakimi Shit, I don't know. Let me try this.

    !games
    !cat
    !gaming
    !girlgamer

    Ragnell ,
    @Ragnell@kbin.social avatar

    Okay, we can link to federated instances is we put a ! in front and type out the whole address. How do we link to communities inside... I'm taking this to m/KbinMeta.

    @danhakimi

    Ragnell ,
    @Ragnell@kbin.social avatar

    @kbinmeta is FAST.

    So, links outside the instance are [!]magazine[@]instance
    Links inside the instance are [@]magazine[@]instance

    Removing the [] brackets of course.

    @danhakimi

    danhakimi OP ,

    that's... confusing... why would you need the [@]instance for the present instance? couldn't it just be [!]magazine with an optional [@]instance afterwards? wouldn't that be easier to remember, easier to type out most of the time, and easier to distinguish from tagging users with @?

    Ragnell ,
    @Ragnell@kbin.social avatar

    @danhakimi Maybe it has something to do with federation and comments populating to other instances.

    danhakimi OP ,

    ah, I guess it would be annoying to translate the links like that... but still, why would it go from being a ! to an @?

    Ragnell ,
    @Ragnell@kbin.social avatar

    @danhakimi THAT I don't understand. MAybe it's a difference between Lemmy and Kbin? The first few I posted were from lemmy instances.

    Cloudless ,
    @Cloudless@kbin.social avatar

    We need more Fediverse users posting pictures of pomeranians, please:

    https://feddit.uk/c/pomeranians

    adonis ,
    @adonis@kbin.social avatar

    I think, this might be due to the currently ongoing federation issues.

    I too see mostly fediverse, nostupidquestions stuff in my feed, but once the dust settles, and a better suggestion algorithm comes into pleace, I'm sure the feed will be much more diverse than now.

    Deathsauce ,
    @Deathsauce@kbin.social avatar

    I've noticed a few other Max Headroom AVIs on my Kbin browsing journeys, so I want to create a community that actively encourages and promotes using Max as your avatar in some form or another. The broadcast hijacker counts too.

    billothekid2 ,

    I was just thinking the same!

    Deathsauce ,
    @Deathsauce@kbin.social avatar

    MORE OF US

    TwilightVulpine ,

    I would like to talk about indie games. Is there a good place for that?

    Nepenthe ,
    @Nepenthe@kbin.social avatar

    If not the more general subs, there's an indie community both on kbin.social and also lemmy.world. Both pretty small atm, but that's the point in building them up

    garrett ,
    @garrett@infosec.pub avatar

    If someone’s got a good community for cooking, lemme know. I’m interested.

    danhakimi OP ,

    @foodporn isn't bad. Not really a cooking community, but active.

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