a bunch of my really good buddies on the birdsite are talking about masto and they are confused about how to get into it bc federation is confusing and I am torn between going in and being all techsplainy or just...not. ha.
@phire That is a hard decision. I can only offer solemn advice, secrets are more fun.
@phire nope, they need to learn on their own or you'll have to techsplain everything to them
@phire Oh man I saw that discussion and thought the same! There was just no way to try to explain the appeal or structure without sounding like a dick, so I moved on.
@deathmtn yeah! like I think if the question had been "this looks cool how do I get started" it would be different but "I don't understand the point of this" is harder to begin with without sounding condescending.
@phire do it. bring them to us
@phire How I described Mastodon to a friend is that there are only 2 meaningful differences to the user:
1. You get 500 characters rather than 140
2. Your address is now explicitly @user@instance. On Twitter the "@instance" part could be implicit because everybody is effectively @user@twitter.
Once you know those two things, pick a site and create an account, the rest can be learned as you go.
@phire they'll figure it out or die tryin. it's a right of passage I think