about the current harassment wave, boost for awareness
The most daunting thing for me about joining Mastodon/Fediverse was picking an instance.
Having joined one, a RL metaphor emerges for me: "it's like picking an apartment building."
You need to evaluate the management. Do they respect tenant rights? Is the desk clerk skeevy?
Do you want to live in a big impersonal complex? Or a little boarding house, where people share a lot and have house parties? You can even be a "home owner" and run your own instance (pay the bills, fix the plumbing).
Modest proposal for Mastodon newcomers
You came here to leave behind algorithmic feeds, advertisement and annoying overruling billionaires. But, probably, you won't immediately delete all your corporate social media accounts. It's not easy, I get it.
The good news is that being active in different social media could mean experimenting with different social media behaviors. If corporate social media are spammy and attention-grabbing, why not using them only for the spammy and attention-grabbing posts, for the relentless self-promotion that many of us are sort of required to do for work?
Let's leave the eyeball-accumulation mindset to birdsite (that's what we call Twitter here), facebook and instagram. Free from that burden, we can make this a space of authentic exchange, not one where everyone shouts at one another while nobody is listening.
@bram_dingelstad 🤣 I'll be honest, having been on mastodon since 2016 and sharing the space with the people here who can actually be themselves without as much fear of running into hate as they do on other sites, does a whole lot to broaden your understanding of the world and the way people with privilege can make it a better place for people without.
This may seem like a trivial thing, but please re-consider using the word 'refugees' when you're coming over from other sites. It's easy to not put much thought into our words, but for a lot of people here, 'refugee' carries a really heavy implication that's being diminished seeing it used for people switching social media sites.
The fediverse at large - not just .art - is a very diverse place full of beautiful people trying to look out for each other in a caring environment. Let's be kind <3
Mastotip: If you tag person x in a DM with person y, both x and y will be able to see what you said. A common workaround is to put spaces between the @ sign and the username (I.e. @ sandrockcstm @ orbitalstation.one).
This is really key if you are discussing a moderation related issue with an admin, say if person x is harassing you. If you tag that person you can inadvertently get them to see the conversation. This is not clear from the UI and a common trap for new users.
You can´t be a #feminist if you don´t actively fight #racism
This is not gate keeping
That means calling out your friends for casual racism
especially if they are queer.
As queer people we should strive to be more accepting than other communities and yet I see people being casually racist all the time.
And there are few things that make my skin crawl more than a queer person discriminating against other people
I hate that over time we've grown up into the idea that every hobby, every artistic venture, every self expression has to be worth something monetarily. It has to be profitable. It has to boost sales, boost visibility, boost your worth as a person by getting attention.
That isn't healthy!
It promotes the idea that your art output is tied to your inherent worth as a person in this crapitalist nightmare. But it's not.
Your art is your own. You are more than numbers.
@aurynn I think it's built on an underpinning of "professional" as complement, and "amateur" or "hobbyist" as a pejorative - the presence of money somehow magically transforming people into the former.
There is no admin interface for reading DMs, I'd have to go write SQL.
This isn't really a thing that admins do, it's concern trolling from disingenuous people trying to make the fedi look worse.
Technical debt collector and general hype-hater. Early 30s, non-binary, ND, poly, relationship anarchist, generally queer.
- No alt text (request) = no boost.
- Boosts OK for all boostable posts.
- DMs are open.
- Flirting welcome, but be explicit if you want something out of it!
- The devil doesn't need an advocate; no combative arguing in my mentions.
Sometimes horny on main (behind CW), very much into kink (bondage, freeuse, CNC, and other stuff), and believe it or not, very much a submissive bottom :p
My spoons are limited, so I may not always have the energy to respond to messages.
Strong views about abolishing oppression, hierarchy, agency, and self-governance - but I also trust people by default and give them room to grow, unless they give me reason not to. That all also applies to technology and how it's built.