Yesterday was the rescheduled Art on the Avenue and the weather was beautiful and I got in ALL MY STEPS and got some arts! A cute cat print and some ceramic dishes that are the almost exactly like the ones I got last year, and some art for my brother for Christmas! And some very yummy jambalaya from the Evening Star cafe. (And I managed to time it perfectly, there was NO LINE at their stand!)

If you’re wondering, “why get the exact same sauce dishes” – there may have been a cat that broke one of them last fall…

At some point, I’m going to have to head over to that neighborhood and just peruse all the shops and restaurants when there isn’t a whole street festival happening. It’s a very cool spot and walkable and neat and of course, unaffordable for actual living, LOL.

Watching Twitter slowly fall apart because the code base isn’t being properly maintained anymore, well – it’s kinda sad. Contractors are now getting fired with no warning and even their managers don’t know until they can’t find them. Little things are breaking. Advertisers are rightfully fleeing.

Folks are looking for a Twitter clone and it just doesn’t exist. The closest is Counter Social since it’s all in one place, but it’s not getting any traction. Mastodon has been pretty good for me, but there is no place for sex workers, and folks from marginalized communities are having troubles, so it does have its own issues.

But I’m also seeing people who joined M and just want it to magically be like Twitter and are almost looking for reasons to hate it. “It’s boring” – from someone who was constantly harassed on Twitter… “I can’t find my community” – signed up 2 days prior. “It’s just silos” – well, sure, if you somehow never look outside your own instance. (And if you don’t want to go outside your instance, that’s fine, too!)

For me, I’m not looking for any single community on Mastodon, because I also wasn’t part of any one community on Twitter. My follows in both spots are all over the place – on M I follow folks from over 30 different instances. And I started with people from Twitter and as they have boosted other people, I’ve found new folks to follow. (Including the husband of someone I went to high school with!)

And at least one person I follow gets it – he’s flat out said, “We can do the same thing here as Twitter – it’s gonna take a little work, but we can do it.”

And if you’re still looking at Mastodon but are worried about picking a shitty instance, you can take a look at the feed of that server and get an idea of what is going on there. For Mastodon.Social (my server) it’s https://mastodon.social/public/local – in some instances it’s just the instance.name/public – but it’s a way to see what’s being posted and decide if it will work for you. And if it’s garbage, you’ll probably see right away.

Mastodon.social has been working fine for me, because it’s all over the place just like my Twitter feed was – but I’m still following lots of folks outside that instance and I’m not feeling “siloed” at all.

I have blocked a handful of folks – not because I’ve gotten any harassment, but when I see someone in the replies of folks I follow and I think “well, that’s kinda dickish” – I just block immediately.

On the whole, it is still very quiet – I’m only following 172 people vs. the over 2K on Twitter, but the quiet is pretty nice. And right now it’s a lot of cat pictures (yay, interwebs!) and folks slowly dipping their toes in and a lot of “wow, it’s very calm here” – and that’s fine. And maybe my feed will never be the shitshow that my Twitter feed has become over the years, and that’s not a bad thing.

And the thing is – very, very few people had an instant community when they stumbled onto Twitter – it’s not going to happen overnight anywhere else either.