Possibly the most patronising reply I’ve ever received on here.
Also, who put you in charge of deciding what boosts are *for*? It flatly contradicts what most people think and do on here, including me.
You are no longer the algorithm, my friends: Boost softly because you boost on my dreams.
@Nickiquote Wow. Should we all donate so that person can finally buy a clue?
@aral @Nickiquote clues are naturally occurring and can't be bought, though they can be traded...
@Nickiquote that's certainly an interesting definition of what boosts are for...
@alice @Nickiquote can I hashtag #SlapThem hashtag #Hashtag
Am I hashtag #Hashtagging right?
@Nickiquote So I've learnt a lot of terms in this thread, my favourite is "reply guy", but I am a little hazy as to the definition, does that include people who keep replying till they get the answer they want or is that a different breed of animal?
I never knew mastodon had such intricacies.
@byrnensorg reply guys¹ are a type of troll² in sheep's clothing. They derail conversations and cause frustration via several tactics.
- Hey, I'm "just asking questions".
- It's called "playing devil's advocate".
- "Well, actually" you're wrong about ___.
- Can you explain it again? I'm "missing the point".
- Woah, I think "you're overreacting"!
See related: sealioning, concern trolling, JAQing off, whataboutism, mansplaining, correctile dysfunction
¹ not all reply guys are guys
² not all trolls are malicious
@alice @Nickiquote Ah I heard of the correctile dysfunction term, that is too funny.
@Nickiquote this reply is spectacularly and completely wrong.
@Nickiquote I do have to hope boosting is not the cause of instances shutting down, otherwise let's just end this federated social media experiment and do something else.
I mean...isn't that, like, the whole •point• of Mastodon? Like, "You are the algorithm," & all that? 🤔
@cavyherd @Nickiquote It may be the point or not, but it's a basic feature of social media, especially of microblogging. If it works that badly, then the whole thing is a failure.
If all this was so important, wouldn't people who run servers tell folks on that server? The server I'm on has a very hands-on administrator stux & he's never mentioned this.
And yes the attitude is super annoying! Regardless of the writer's gender this is vintage mansplaining.
@FallsMom That text has a lot of technical mistakes. @Nickiquote
@Nickiquote although I genuinely don't understand whether setting your posts to delete after a certain amount of time is a good idea or not. I saw a post saying doing it was good to save your instance's memory, so I did, then I saw a post saying you shouldn't because the work of doing the actual deleting creates more load on all the servers you federate with, so I took it off, and now I just assume anything I do probably isn't fucking anything up as much as AI anyway so don't bother
@afewbugs @Nickiquote do it if you want your posts to go away after a while, don't if you don't. For text posts, at least, the storage and processing are negligible.
@Nickiquote WHY IS EVERYONE USING MASTODON DIFFERENTLY TO HOW I USE MASTODON IT'S A DISGRACE
@Nickiquote congratulations on bumping my previous winner of worst take on Mastodon off the top spot, which was "You shouldn't follow anyone with a higher number of 'posts and replies' than 'posts' because they must be a reply guy"
@afewbugs @Nickiquote
I'm not sure about tha--
O no!
@afewbugs @Nickiquote Who even checks stats like that?
@afewbugs @Nickiquote I've been here for years but I'm still not really sure what a reply guy is.
@blueorangeblue @afewbugs I think there’s a reply guy threshold much like the old alcoholic threshold: “a guy who replies more than me”.
@Nickiquote @afewbugs is it one of those "if you don't know who in the room is the reply guy it's you" things or am I still not getting it
@blueorangeblue @Nickiquote I think it's not about how much you reply but how you reply. Having a normal conversation by means of replies in a thread doesn't make you a reply guy. Replying "This post has nothing to do with me but let me tell you in exhaustive detail how in my opinion, which is of course the only correct opinion, you are doing computers/activism/cycling/life completely wrong" when you just posted about your cat does
@afewbugs @Nickiquote that's reassuring 🙂
@blueorangeblue @Nickiquote Reply guys are not exclusively male, in my experience the ones telling you you are Doing Computers Wrong tend to be but the ones telling you you are feeding your cat wrong tend to be female
@afewbugs @Nickiquote I am sure that one day your "don't follow the reply guy" person will bump into my "don't follow the people without replies as they're just shouting at Fedi and never engaging in conversation" person and all sorts of hilarity will ensue.
@afewbugs @Nickiquote Wut? Doesn't that mean you can't reply to anything at all then?
@beecycling @Nickiquote Mastodon is just for shouting past one another in endless unacknowledged monologues, apparently
@afewbugs Reply guy here.
IMHO dialogue, conversation, chatting are all a Good Thing. Maybe even gossip too. @beecycling @Nickiquote
@afewbugs That is certainly A Take.
@Nickiquote I see a post I like I boost it?! Am I doing mastodon wrong somehow?
Me too. If that’s wrong I don’t wanna be right.
@Nickiquote you know, whenever I use accessibility features like alt-text I think to myself, "I'm in twitter mode!"
I really love to see a 'how you should use mastodon' reply. Haven't seen one in ages. I have never and will never use a #HashTag
@TheBreadmonkey @Nickiquote My whole approach to curating my TL is in defiance of fools like this. If you scroll back far enough (which I sincerely hope you aren't sad enough to do!) you can watch it evolve in real-time as I decide which folks I want to maximally irritate just put of sheer, bloody-minded stubbornness. 🤷🏻♂️
Seriously fedi HOA crowd, take some adult responsibility for your own online experience and use the tools available. It ain't up to everyone else to pander to your preciousness.
Also 'boosts are the reason instances shut down' is a weird take. I found the exchange and was going to respond there, but thought that was a bit mean spirited and might cause a pile on. We all have to learn and she is just at a different stage of the process. So instead I write my response here....
"Sorry Nick. You must now go back to Twitter or otherwise be responsible for the destruction of the Fediverse for selfishly boosting other peoples posts, using alttext, and not using hashtags like an absolute ARSE. Thanks so much [redacted] for saving us from Nick and his selfish ways."
Also for what it's worth, I now have over a hundred thousand post (many of which contain media - some videos at the absolute upper upload band) and boost like I've got some weird boosting illness. I asked Kris if it was ever a problem and he said - meh no it's fine - loads of space. 👍
@TheBreadmonkey @Nickiquote lads, I think posts also put a burden on our servers so we should probably stop posting as well, just to be safe.
@Scmbradley @TheBreadmonkey @Nickiquote Dunno about my server, but my posts put an undue burden on my own mental health, so I'm going to block myself.
@TheBreadmonkey I think my admin would agree.
Although I do suspect one day he'll realise he's got the decimal place wrong and I will cause the ultimate destruction of beige.party in an explosion so devastating it takes out like 75% of the other instances (full disclosure I am not a computer expert)
@TheBreadmonkey @Nickiquote if anyone's going to shitpost so hard it breaks the internet it would be you Ben
I feel like I'm almost there
@Nickiquote Whaaaaa??
Honestly, how many people subscribe to tags? The active ones are usually not specific enough to be interesting.
Boosts, on the other hand, form my entire timeline!
@samerion For me tags are the main way to find new people and stuff here. It's in part why pixelfed hashtag spam is so annoying as it breaks that functionality.
