I recently tried to join Mastodon, and like Twitter before it, I don’t understand the premise. You follow individuals instead of topics, and if you try to follow hashtags they change on a whim all the time so you’re unlikely to get relevant posts.
Am I missing something, or is the purpose just to shout your opinions into the void? Could any Twitter/Mastodon users explain it to me like I’m 4?
At its best, twitter was group texting, but in public. its evolved into a semi-broadcast form with the expectation that many will read and few will engage, and in both twitter and mastodon the tooling is built for that.
within that, you follow people because they produce content you want, or because you intend to interact. Hashtags are there for topics you are intersted in so you can consume in a more ad-hoc way
I‘m influenced too heavily by my time one Reddit now. When I tried Mastodon and saw something interesting I wanted to read the comments and engage. But then it’s just silence. I might as well talk to the TV.
If you want something similar to Reddit you should try Lemmy. Otherwise Mastodon is (pretty much like Twitter) a fire (shout) and forget principle. Sometimes there are conversations going on, where you can engage in, if you like.
Edit: didn’t even notice, that I‘m commenting this on Lemmy… 😬
Same experience. If you want people to talk to you on Mastodon you have to insult them LOL that’s how I started getting attention and finally getting fucking followers LOL it’s ridiculous haha