Incessant Chatter

“Are you still living or are you already alive?” That was once an advertising slogan for a furniture store. Today we could ask: Are you still alive or are you already multichanneling? Not that esoteric talk some psychics used to fetch from their brain before we had social media. I talk about the need to serve more than one channel professionally, even if you don't like it at all. The incessant chatter can be tiring.

Since the super-big platforms use their profits for financing a fascist system, people with integrity leave these muddy bars. The alternatives still don't have nearly as many members. The disadvantage: social media breaks down into facets. For professionals, it means the times of one platform where you find everybody, are over. You have to decide whether you want to do without the missing people - or split up your work. I'm currently testing the latter because of my podcast. I am and will remain on Mastodon (Opens in a new window) in the Fediverse as my centre of social media. But I've also been on Bluesky (Opens in a new window) for a few days now.

Here’s my absolutely subjective impression due to my goals, the type of people I follow, and the topics I am looking for. And it is only ephemeral after a few days, so it can change. You can find tons of material about the technical differences and user numbers via search. And yes, you can find people on Mastodon with hate against Bluesky and people on Bluesky hating Mastodon (which is only one part of the Fediverse). But you find more people who use both like they eat steak in a restaurant and cake in a café. They tend to be quiet.

Meanwhile, Mastodon is a cosy nest where I can have lively conversations with a good mix of more prominent people and complete unknowns, learn a lot of new stuff (including about different conversational cultures) and get a lot more interaction with far fewer followers than I had on Twitter. When I wanted to ask people what fascinates them about moss for my new podcast episode, this is the most intriguing platform.

Then I started on Bluesky as a newcomer does: first of all, diligently following people, interacting, sharing and commenting from time to time. Writing my own posts. Yes, it was much simpler than thinking “decentralised” because it isn’t so much. It uses the AT Protocol (Opens in a new window) but imitates Twitter feeling.

My account existed only some seconds when I got my first followers! They look all like the same cloned kind of a woman bred in a test tube using Instagram, botulinum, and Ai genes. They don’t interact, don’t write, only boost. Mostly it was politics, superficially in favour of more liberal views. But while scrolling, suddenly Chinese posts appeared. Typical for propaganda bots. To be honest, to this day I rarely know whether a real person is following me - even humans don't seem to be so keen on real names and profile descriptions. This makes people interchangeable.

First I was happy. I found all these people again who had been important for me in the last years. Because I love their books or work. Because they gave me important input to see the world while shifting the perspective. My podcast wouldn’t exist without them inspiring me. I found the people who teached me English nature writing in workshops, a publisher who had published one of my very small stories, and these people with their fascinating online events about nature. Many of them had tried Mastodon and left. Mastodon has lost them.

The reasons why someone tries something else are personal and varied. But some have left because they were bullied in the first few days by know-it-alls and their ‘this is how we do it on Mastodon!’, or experienced excessive mansplaining. Adult, independent spirits. Those never come back. And unfortunately they are right: this educational mania is a problem, if you don’t block. (I’m curious if I will experience the same factor of mansplaining (Opens in a new window) on Bluesky).

At the moment, interaction on Bluesky is quite zero. You get likes. Sharings came from bots mainly, some single persons followed back. So I’m still in the void.

I can choose between a “Discovery” and “Following” timeline, sorted by algorithms. Main difference to Mastodon, which is algorithm-free and presents your followers’ posts in real time. So if you don’t follow enough people of your time zone from the beginning, you can feel lost. The opposite happens on Bluesky: the “discovery” timeline overwhelms me with tons of garbage, bot accounts, AI crap, and incessant chatter. It is as if your brain suddenly turns all the people in the pedestrian zone to the same volume. Even the biggest idiots, from whom you have fortunately been spared so far in real life.

I could only tolerate my “Following” stream: even this is too much noise. I follow the Guardian but it’s RSS dominates everything. On Mastodon, I have so much more possibilities of finetuning. I have a list for journalism and muted it for my livestream - I only read it if I want. On Mastodon, I can mute agitated people for 24 hours or 7 days, or simply their boosts. I have installed filters with warnings and without. Yes, you have trolls and haters on Mastodon but the mods are real humans and react fast. For mental wellness, it’s the best.

On Bluesky come all these possibilities to “train the algorithms” or be lazy, read ready “feeds”, or import people with starter packs: “Take 100 fungi guys and 150 people who walk barefoot on concrete, and here are the 250 best hobby astronomers, or get 1500 politicians for free!” I suppose I'll get more followers if I walk barefoot on concrete one day and someone puts me in the club.

But why should I train algorithms for a company? Why should I show them that I am fascinated by fungi and insects? It starts with fungi and ends with the 1500 politicians who want to conquer the world. And hey, who pays me for all this extra work of packing starter packs, or feeds, or tuning this in reality quite centralistic “machine”? And still it’s free - but for how long?

After some days following all these highly inspiring people, I had lost every inspiration. I was fed up with that good old slimy feeling. I had to work hard to get rid of it after Twitter and Facebook: this dependence on the treats that the algorithms sprinkle into your brain. They make you restless and make you feel like eating a bad fast food hamburger: You eat too quickly and are hungry again after a minute.

Maybe I've become too much of a hippie through Mastodon because I value the conversations with interesting people so much. It doesn't matter whether they have 2 followers or 20,000 - what matters is whether they have something to say. In any case, I'm too independent to give everything over to one company again. And the future?

What I do now: I installed a comfortably small list on Bluesky with the people I had missed. Sometimes I read this list only. Not the live feeds. Not on week-ends. I try to post, perhaps comment. Even the most interesting people only “broadcast”. I suspect that some of them have been letting their students do this for a long time. If I find more listeners for my podcast - we will see! Professionally, I have to give it a try.

I may be cured of large platforms for good. I prefer quality over quantity. And I prefer nature, not that slimy feeling.

Every “platform” has its advantages: For example, protests organise better on Bluesky, reach many more people, create more visibility. But if I want to practice co-operation virtually, talk about backgrounds and visions, or how to recognise anti-democratic behaviour, then Mastodon is the right place. Yes, it’s some more work to understand what decentralised systems mean, and to actively choose or filter. But the finetuning in the Fediverse is definitively better and you can learn it (Opens in a new window).

For me, more meaningful human connections are the future, especially in the political situation at the moment. And for informations and news, I turn on the broadcasting platform - but I turn it off again, before I feel overwhelmed. Like a radio. Well, that’s me. Your experiences can be utterly different, and that’s good!