Not watching a movie tonight, so I was scrolling through my Mastodon timeline. I don't spend a lot of time on Mastodon. Certainly nowhere near the hours I spent on Twitter each day. I think I visit my timeline every couple of days or so, and since I don't follow as many people as I did on Twitter, I don't feel as though I'm missing out on much.

There was a poll toot recently that just concluded, which asked something along the lines, "How toxic is your timeline?" I think the majority response was, "Not toxic at all."

I responded to the poll before it closed with that answer, because I don't experience the same level of vitriol that I did on Twitter, which is what I associated with "toxicity."

That said, my impression this evening is one of disappointment. I liked one of the things Jack Baty said about "comments" on many sites, that most of them are "performative." Too much of what I read on Mastodon is, I think, also performative.

Sometimes that's fine. If it's a part of an online persona that's offered in a light-hearted, sort of self-deprecating or unpretentious way, I enjoy that. I mean, I don't feel as though I'm getting to know much about you as a person. But I can appreciate the performance. And for some folks, maybe that's the safest way they can engage on social media, which raises questions of its own.

But then there are the ones that just come across as very condescending. Their Mastodon account isn't a "micro-instance" of chatting over the back fence, it's a way to puff themselves up. A vehicle to promote themselves before a very tiny audience. Their many years of deep, deep experience with a particular issue that may be something of a topic de jour, compels them to wave all that froth away, dismissing the excitement and enthusiasm, while citing some admired, deceased pillar of "the community," whose work they still refer to "often."

Please...

Now, shame on me, I should just unfollow those accounts.

But I think it's just an aspect of that medium.

It's almost like a live audience, depending on how often you post, how many followers you have. It invites that sort of "performative" post. If you think of yourself as some sort of sage, and you want to be perceived as a sage, respected as a sage, then it practically demands that you be condescending.

And nobody's going to call you on it. If you've got a relatively high follower account, if you're a high attention-earner, then those lower in the hierarchy are more likely to reply with "likes" or favorable comments. Partly because that's "more civil," or "less toxic" than calling someone out. It's also less risky. There's probably more upside to being nice to a pompous blow-hard than piercing their pretension. So they never experience negative feedback, and it just reinforces the behavior. They get more pompous.

I think these social media platforms that quantify things like "followers" and "likes" and other "metrics" distort the "social" aspect of the medium. I think Mastodon would be improved if you and I didn't know how many "followers" we had, or who "followed" us. What are we supposed to do with that information?

I think it only serves the platform, by making it more appealing to users who look to social media for validation or approval, for some measure of their "popularity" or "authority." People looking for those things will go to a platform that provides it. People who are missing something in their lives, seeking to fill it with, I don't know, metrics.

I'm going be thinking about my Mastodon account. I was entertaining the idea of joining Bluesky, but now I'm not.

"We shape our tools, and then our tools shape us." Somebody.

We ought to be getting a clue by now, don't you think?