I hope that this works because apparently even though I’m signed up on lemmy.world and visiting a sub native to lemmy.world, all that this subreddit loads for me is one single post from 2024 (and yet I can see all posts from my myserv.one instance).
I don’t mind if no one reads this, I just need to get my experience of my chest, especially my Bluesky experience over these last couple of months.
I’ve tried Twitter on and off, well before Musk, and it never really clicked for me. I could sort of see the appeal but largely it came across as a sea of jocks and trendy assholes. So it was never much of a big deal for me to just walk away from it.
Enter Bluesky. I was attracted by its left wing reputation and all the cool queer people there. But I’m afraid that over all, it didn’t do much to change my opinion that this sort of social media is for the ‘cool’ kids, cliques and people who prize their image above all else.
In the beginning it was pretty fun. I used the same profile pic and account name as here and didn’t list my age in my profile. And I was having enough fun to stick around. But after the 3rd DM from someone that I’m pretty sure was a teenager, I decided to do the right thing and mention my age on my profile. I also decided to use my real name and add an actual photo of me, making it clear that I’m AMAB despite my tastes and the company I want to keep. And I can tell you, from that moment, the little bit of fun that I was having there completely dried up. From that point on, the only people following me were porn bots and these weird accounts with no posts that look like they lifted the profile pic from the ‘management’ section of a website somewhere.
Now, to be fair, there were a few cool people in my age group (38) that I followed but most are married with 2.5 kids and are these bluewave people where every second post is a picture of Trump’s face or Kamala Harris. And as far as men go, my faith and trust is also at an all time low at this point. But that still doesn’t make me feel any less like a reject piece of shit.
I also did something there that I will forever regret. While I had my real name and photo up, I decided to take the major step of telling the world that I realised I’m non-binary a couple of years ago. My heart was in my fucking throat because I was now putting myself at risk of people in the real world finding out what’s been going on with me. And the reception that I got to that was crickets chirping. Not even the few clearly NB / trans / non-conforming people that had deemed me worthy enough for a follow back chipped in with anything. I ended up deleting the post in shame 24 hours later and reverting back to anonymity.
So yeah, Bluesky was largely heart breaking for me and made me feel a dog desperately scratching at the door to get in somewhere. I don’t know how people do it. Every attempt at socializing that fails, and the endless tweaking of my profile to try and attract some friends feels pretty degrading to me. I WAY prefer a platform like this where I can join a conversation about She-ra and the Princesses of Power and gush about how rad Adora is if I want. And actually get feedback and someone to let me know that I’m alive without taking a look at my profile picture or age and judging me before the conversation has even started. I just wish this place worked better. Thanks for listening.
I think to really enjoy Twitter and Bluesky you have to buy in to the idea of “influencers”. First you follow the major influencers, then you follow the smaller influencers, and by commenting on their posts you make friends… maybe? Or you become an influencer yourself.
The only time microblogging platforms are interesting to me are during Eurovision or when a group of people are doing an online movie-watching party or something, then it can be fun to see people post their brief thoughts as the event unfolds.
btw I assume you’ve come across Blåhaj Lemmy already?
Yes I’ve seen the Blåhaj instance. I’m just still getting my head around how everything works here and not sure yet what the advantage to signing up there in particular would be, when we’re all seeing the same content and interacting with each other across instances anyway.
Something tells me that I might end up there once I get my head around the intricacies and politics here in the fediverse. But yesterday when I was having trouble with the first server I chose, I got the impression that lemmy.world is probably where I should start out as a noob, if I want an all round impression of what this platform has to offer and what it’s all about.
yeah, lemmy.world is a decent place to start. Blahaj might have some communities you’re interested in, but you can follow them by looking at them here: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/communities and clicking “subscribe”. (enter “lemmy.world” when it asks what your home instance is)
I’ve already subscribed to a few Blåhaj based communities from here in lemmy.world. If you search communities, you can choose between ‘local’ and ‘all’. The only difference from subscribing to a native community is that instead of immediately saying “joined” it first says “subscription pending” for a few seconds. But I haven’t needed to jump through any particular hoops to subscribe to communities outside of lemmy.world yet.
Awesome, glad to see you’re finding your way around!
I’m sorry you had a bad experience, but personally I’ve never understood “microblogging” myself. Like on Lemmy/Reddit, you can have pointless short conversations with people. On BlueSky/X, what is the point? It just seems like people screaming into the void hoping to attract some likes. I never understood how you were supposed to use it. Part of your problem with it seems to be that you want it to be more of a forum when it really isn’t.
I don’t want to come off wrong but a lot of your post looks like you’re desperately looking for strangers to give you validation and you feel like you’re not cool enough to fit in online wherever you are. Those are internal thoughts, not reality (how can you know that you’re not “cool enough” nobody really gives a shit on the internet), and worth exploring in therapy… especially if you’re just recently realizing you’re NB I’m sure as a child, like me you were probably bullied by peers for being different. Kids are excellent at spotting difference and capitalizing on it, the kids I was around knew I was gay before I did by at least 15 years.
I can’t speak for other but I don’t really try to make internet friends nor do I expect it. And most think I’m a dude when in reality I’m a queer woman AFAB who has a somewhat masculine appearance IRL. I think in all the years I’ve been online I’ve made like one or two friends from the internet? Back before social media I was on a forum related to my interest and met someone off there IRL. My father used to game, WW2 and flight simulator stuff, and he made friends online through that and met up a couple times IRL with them.
Idk if it’s my neurodivergence but I struggle with seeing other people online as real people, especially in this day and age with bots and AI.
That’s the funny thing. Usually I’m not that interested in making ‘friends’. I spent a decade plus on Reddit not worrying what others think. But I got caught up in it on Bluesky, and it’s like that sort of social media does something to my brain chemistry and so I should just stay away.
In a way, it seems to me like the microblogging format is all about validation from the start. Otherwise why else are people there putting up profiles like a shopfront and shitposting like clockwork all day. And I’m not after the kind of validation where someone says “wow you’re so cool” (I’m using the word ‘cool’ loosely in this conversation, partly snarkily but also as a compliment to the people that were ‘cool’ in my opinion, if that makes sense), I’m not really interested in being ‘cool’ and I hate that it came across that way. I’m just saying that monologuing on a platform where no one gives a solitary shit is pretty sad.
As far as bullying went, I did have a bully for a little while when I was a kid (going into more detail is one for therapy lol) and after that I was mostly a loner that did my own thing. Not completely friendless but I’ve never really fit in anywhere and learnt to enjoy my own company. But I’ll say again, platforms like Bluesky do something to my head. It feels a lot more personal than places like this.
But you didn’t come off wrong, don’t worry. It started well for me on Bluesky but for each day that passed there without the results or reception I was hoping for, the gremlins in my head got louder and louder.
Blue sky is more like Twitter but federated right? (I’m not on it) I wonder why that format makes you feel that way compared to a Reddit like format. I could never get into Twitter once I went from blackberry to iPhone, the app I used on my blackberry (ubertwitter) had a UI that made a lot more sense than twitter’s official app for iPhone which made me constantly confused if people were quoting or replying to each other. So I stopped using it.
Re monologging on a platform where no one gives a shit, that’s like the modern day equivalent of journaling. I spew all kinds of crazy on my tumblr that I have from years ago and get little to no interaction. I guess I don’t care? It’s an outlet for me. But again, neurodivergence.
I have a friend who puts tons of efforts into photos and videos for IG despite having few followers or likes. She does it because she enjoys it not because she wants a reaction from people.
This is why I’m suggesting therapy…
Nah you’re right, I’ve probably needed therapy for a long time. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I’m lifelong undiagnosed something, either autism or ADHD or both. And definitely depression, although I’m starting to believe that it’s a symptom rather than the cause. And going around like this without answers or treatment has kinda wrecked my life so far.
The thing that has been holding me back from seeking answers in recent years is that I really can’t afford private help and I have strong doubts about the public healthcare system in my country, particularly when it comes to mental health. But I’m starting to realise that the least I could do is try it.
I think what happened with me on Bluesky is that when things started off ok there, I started daydreaming that I could put the recluse life behind and re-join the world. I wanted to try something completely different from Reddit and I was invested in making something for myself on this shiny new platform, leaving the recluse life behind me and rejoining society. For years, apart from checking other platforms out occasionally, Reddit was my sole social media, so it was a new, exciting adventure lol. I built up some pretty big expectations of how it was going to go in my head and reality didn’t live up to it. Maybe I can be ready to try again once I’ve settled here properly for my main social media fix and it’s no longer this personal project that I can’t live up to.
And to answer your first question (sorry), as I understand it, it’s not federated but it is open source and available for others to make use of the protocol if they want.
Nah you’re right, I’ve probably needed therapy for a long time. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I’m lifelong undiagnosed something, either autism or ADHD or both. And definitely depression, although I’m starting to believe that it’s a symptom rather than the cause. And going around like this without answers or treatment has kinda wrecked my life so far.
Don’t know ya personally but I bet you’re onto something especially if you have social issues such as being reclusive. And same re life wrecked.
The thing that has been holding me back from seeking answers in recent years is that I really can’t afford private help and I have strong doubts about the public healthcare system in my country, particularly when it comes to mental health. But I’m starting to realise that the least I could do is try it.
SAME. I’m in the US and it’s a nightmare here. I also refuse to get gaslit about these being “me” problems and not structural problems in society. I have major major major fucking trauma from growing up queer and neurodivergent and it’s honestly ruined my life. Finding help here is expensive and difficult especially in the rural area I live in.
Yeah it’s a pretty sad state that the system in the US is comparable to 3rd world countries. Here in South Africa, the standard healthcare isn’t awful. I’ve had quite a lot of dental work done over the years for a once off payment a few years ago that was less than a movie ticket.
But it’s a chaotic experience. There’s definitely no personal touch, you’re just one in a sea of people getting herded around until your turn comes, the staff are overworked and most likely underpaid so they don’t exactly have an aura of friendless and helpfulness, and you’re not even guaranteed to end up seeing the same dentist every time.
And I kinda shudder to think of what the mental health version of all of this would be. Not at all confident that they don’t just prescribe random generic pills to every second person and call it a day. I actually made a post asking for advice about it in the autism sub on Reddit around a year or so ago and never got a response, so clearly there weren’t many South Africans around there.
But it’s a chaotic experience. There’s definitely no personal touch, you’re just one in a sea of people getting herded around until your turn comes, the staff are overworked and most likely underpaid so they don’t exactly have an aura of friendless and helpfulness, and you’re not even guaranteed to end up seeing the same dentist every time.
We get this for the price of bankruptcy except most of the upper layers of care (high level nurses, drs) are well paid. As I wake up with dental pain needing a root canal I am jealous that you got work done for a movie ticket. I’m honestly considering a trip to Mexico to get work done. I think a root canal here is at least $6000 for one tooth vs $500 to pull the tooth entirely. I already lost one tooth I don’t want to lose another… for reference $6000 would buy me a half decent used car with moderate to high miles here.
We live in a state of collapse but it’s hypernormalization where nobody seems to notice and everyone just walks around like nothings wrong.
Oddly the only social media I liked was myspace but that was because of the music. You followed bands and they mostly had their portfolio of work available. I signed up for facebook and linkedin to just sorta keep a connection to people. Having worked before linkedin I have a whole major area of my career where I could not contact anyone I worked with and its sorta sad in a way. Besides that they both have limited function that are useful but I have no idea why people want to post about everything to their feeds or hang out on it all day. I made a twitter just to sorta claim space but really back in the day slashdot was my thing. Went to reddit mainly because it in many ways was very like the old newsgroups. alt.dogs or such. then when the api thing blew up I found and became a member of the federation and its even more like the old newsgroups do to the independent nature of it. Im one of the folks who are pretty meh about growth of the community as I like that it tends to attract nerds and im not exposed to general humanity and its under the radar enough to limit botting. Sorry Im way off from topic but yeah twitter made the least sense to me. Its really just a centralized blog to me. I think its big original advantage was the limitation to text message formats when it was just text and all that is gone. It migh make sense for famous folks but honestly it would make more sense to me that they run their own lemmy/mbin instances with a community about what they are famous for. Yeah it would cost some but its way low and allows them to retain control.
I started off on MySpace when I was around 17 or 18. But back then I didn’t have uncapped wifi and I would’ve had either a brick or a java dumbphone in my pocket, so I only really accessed it at work. Those were fun times though.
After MySpace I used various forum sites. I wasn’t interested in Facebook because my opinion was “been there, done that with MySpace” but a family member signed me up there. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t end up hooked there for a few years.
When I finally discovered Reddit though, I dropped Facebook like a hot potato and went all in. It was like the forum sites I loved but bigger and better and with everything in one place.
Never could get the hang of Twitter though. I don’t ‘get’ places like Instagram either because you can in fact, post photos on other social media too. And the comment sections are a dumpster fire. And I tried TikTok but see absolutely no value in being spoonfed content instead of choosing.
yeah I sorta feel the same with instagram. I feel like anything I want to do I can do here. It is nice having the microblog to throw something that you just can’t find a place for but even then we have whats on your mind type communities.
Sorry you’re experiencing technical difficulties. Perhaps it’s the browser or client and a different one may yield better results. I also had a hard time getting into the twitter-like platforms. Even mastodon I now use more for notifications/updates. Lemmy has been the first fruitful online community I’ve used in years, so I hope it works out for you, too.
I think I’ve mostly got to the bottom of it now. I’m sure there’ll still be one or two more obstacles moving forward but I keep inching towards a seamless experience here. The first server I chose was pretty bad and with this server, turns out that the problem was that in language settings, “Undefined” was selected but “English” was deselected. Seems like you have to ctrl click to select more than one and I think the first time I went through my settings, I didn’t realise that. Pretty sure that wasn’t the case in the first server I joined but I might be mistaken. Honestly I question why “Undefined” is even listed there in the first place and isn’t just a default, hidden setting. Seems very ‘beta version’ to me.
I’m liking what I’m seeing here though. So I’m definitely thinking that I’m going to power through any other issues I come across to stick around.
Glad that you like it.
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected], it it normal that English isn’t visible by default to new users, like this new joiner experienced?
It loads for me!
