Holler if you're reading this on the MB timeline and you aren't one of the nine folks I'm following.

@Moondeer Holler

@Moondeer Hoy!

@odd @pratik y'all are two of the nine;)

@Moondeer holler

@Moondeer Hello there 👋

@pratik @odd Is this confirmation that you will never see yourself in someone else's following list? I never had the patience to finish scrolling any of y'all's lists the last time I was checking my list to enforce mutual follows.

@crlzff And now I follow 10 folks;)

@Moondeer I’m not sure… 🤔

@Moondeer hooray!

@odd there are only 10 names in my list. You should see yourself in it if it is possible to see yourself. I suspect @manton only has accounts listed that you are not following yourself; but, I really haven't a clue.

@Moondeer you can't see yourself - what you see are all the people that the viewed account follows that you do not, so when someone clicks through they won't see themselves because by definition they are already following themselves.

Eg - I see nobody - because I am already following every Microblogger you are following.

@Moondeer Yup. I think Micro.blog does this well. You don’t see yourself or the people you’re already following. Basically it’s a discovery feature

@JohnPhilpin what I suspected

@pratik

We went around on this six months back or so. It is great for well socialized folks without a mutuality restraint.

For, let's say, the socially eclectic like me, it means that following someone new will take periodic holler/response posts that may or may not be seen, in order to find more mutual contacts like I found @crlzff this go around.

@Moondeer and in turn I found @crlzff through you.

@Moondeer 👋

@Pratik

I think it basically amounts to this: social media only feels right when you are sold on the social.

You are only sold on the social when you find yourself engaging in someone else's interest while you find others engaging in your own.

Every post is an active attempt to engage (try disconnecting your feed for a bit and see what talking to yourself feels like).

Failed attempts (no interaction) are grating for those without sufficient human connection.

It's helpful to know that I am at least in someone's feed for potential discovery.

Logic is not driving this behavior.

It is what is.

I think it will be three years on MB come November.

Best I can tell, I have a reach of 10 folks.

@Moondeer Well, I don’t remember what I said last time but this is where Micro.blog shines. Though deliberate choices in how it’s designed and presented, it curbs your temptation of knowing who is following you and effectively even showing others that you’re following them. This also curbs the follow-back expectation and unnecessary drama of trying to understand why someone unfollowed you.

The only way of knowing and even then it’s not always true is when the other person comments on (replies to) your post. This encourages meaningful interaction.

I hope Micro.blog never changes this. Otherwise it would be like any other social network.

@JohnPhilpin Hi 👋

@Moondeer I get your point, and it’s probably the reason I postponed starting a blog for years until I found Micro.blog. It felt a bit like shouting in a giant void without its social component…

But at the same time I love the friction its UX provides, the raw edges and idiosyncrasies, because it forces you to be more deliberate in what you're trying to do and gives you space (and time) to reflect about it, instead of going out on a follow-binge.

@crlzff BOOYA 👋

@crlzff

forces you to be more deliberate in what you're trying to do

Spot on

@Moondeer hollers 👋🏻

@crlzff I haven't really checked timelines since I broke up with woke Twitter(I had ignored social media until the first impeachment trial), or certainly since hanging up the boots to watch the world burn.

Thinking about your point though, I think I get it. I kind of reminds me of how the character limitation was an unforeseen blessing when I began to compose tweets. When every character counts, you focus more on what you really want to say.

@pratik Since the last reply is misconstruable (wasn't a word before… it is now, you're welcome) as *fart sound, or perhaps a raspberry*, I wanted to wrap on a different note.

When I'm not trying to get my passion projects before y'all's eyes for some reason ∊ (acknowledgment, engagement, validation, someotherfingreason), I tend to enjoy MB. And with hollers back from @crlzff, @meandering, and @mroutley… the list of accounts I'm following is now 30% longer.

@Moondeer here is the irony (surely this is the wrong use of irony), what I want is to follow back everyone that is following me… but, y'all tend to follow so many accounts that asking via post is akin to waving my arms from the lawn outside y'all's classroom hoping to grab the attention of whoever happens to look out the window.

The only way for me to actually follow accounts that follow my account would be for @manton to privately break protocol and whisper a list in my ear (or silently follow the accounts for me).

💡

Ok, here we go. Feature request. An option, off by default, tucked behind as many confirmation (are you sure? Do you reallly want to do this?) popups as you like:

Autofollow

Two boolean settings:

⒈ Automatically follow accounts that follow this account

⒉ Automatically unfollow accounts that unfollow this account

I'd even make you a deal. Roll this feature out and I'll create (and maintain) a plugin of your choice… and here is the real draw @manton… I'll compose the plugin to be the perfect MB citizen, instead of trying to uproot your entire plugin paradigm in order to plant my own.

Retrospective: hell, one of the two most recent (last four years) sociable stretches I've had was writing all those plugins. I mean… FFS… those READMEs

@Moondeer

asking via post is akin to waving my arms from the lawn outside y'all's classroom hoping to grab the attention of whoever happens to look out the window

😂

I see where you're going with this... I don't think I would use such feature, but I can imagine some interesting outcomes... and probably failing to spot a several unintented second-order consequences 😆

Fact is, I don't know how much it can scale (at least for me)... I don't want my feed to be innundated by a sudden inordinate amount of content.

@Moondeer, @JohnPhilpin, @pratik I've mentioned you guys in a post, but since it's over 600 characters I'm not sure you got it in you Mentions page... crlzff.xyz/2023/08/1...

@crlzff I bet folks like @JohnPhilpin (based on his telling me he follows every MB account) engaging the autofollow, but not the autounfollow.

I can easily imagine myself being the only user to utilize such a feature. I haven't come across anyone else whose social media philosophy hinges on the mutuality of the connections. I'm pretty sure I haven't even come across anyone else that doesn't look at timelines (I check mentions and, if the timeline is visible when I go to compose a new post, something may grab my eye at the top).

I was about to suggest that I am an off label MB user, but, I'm not sure that is the case. I think it may be more accurate to say that @manton actually provides two separate products:

1. A social media platform
2. A blogging platform

I came to MB just before Twitter permanently suspended my original account. I can appreciate aspects of @manton's model for ⑴. I was looking for (and totally embraced) what @manton was offering with ⑵.

There are ways to reform ⑴ such that I may be drawn in… or there may be a way to offer those here for ⑵ a more meaningful way to interact with ⑴.

It also may be that the chemicals, substrates, and electrical current composing my neural network need balancing ¯_(ツ)_/¯

@crlzff we should all get the mention thanks to that API I'm currently drawing a blank on (the one I even had kicking over mentions for tweets containing blog post links).

@crlzff Thanks for sending it along and nope, it doesn't show up in our mentions if it's a macro post.

@Moondeer I would say that as someone who starts out on Mb, you should follow anyone who replies to your post or is included in a post where you are also mentioned. You may need to send out a few posts before you start getting replies. @jean sometimes speeds that up by featuring a new user's posts in Discover. I always make it a point to reach out to someone who seems new.

@Moondeer hello 👋

@pratik I think I follow everyone that has replied aside from a handful that stopped replying.

To be fair to @jean, my content is not your content (I mean, half of it is … but that isn't the half I'm incapable of getting in front of y'all) ;)

Thus far MB has three folks interested my particular voice (and I mean the real real in my art, essays, and prose)… and those three are @JohnPhilpin, @odd, and you (and I already know you can appreciate how daunting trying me on can be). Are there likely more out there that simply haven't been exposed. Of course. Am I so sure, or is the method of seeking them out so easy, that such an attempt may escape the ADHD "meh"… well… not so far… not so far.

P.S. I'm pretty sure I've had a conversation or two in this wheelhouse with some others, perhaps @timapple, but I recall concrete examples with the three mentioned above.

@Moondeer also, @Munish makes four. Pretty good holler haul this time around:)

@Moondeer You would be surprised at how many actually follow you compared to those that reply to you (maybe 90:10). Sometimes it can be intimidating to reply to avoid looking like a fool (perhaps I don't mind being one). But on the other hand, it would help you to follow more and respond more to people. My latest post was inspired by this conversation 🙃

@Moondeer fwiw I see your posts

@Moondeer holler

@Moondeer HOLLA

@Moondeer Here

@Moondeer 👋

@heyloura y'all comin' out the woodwork now;) one more and I will have doubled the number of folks I am following

We should start the @Moondeer Appreciation Society.

// @odd @pratik

@Moondeer did I tell you that? In fairness it is an experiment I started waaaaaay back when I joined - and for a totally different reason. But for me now it is just automatic. What is really interesting is how many 'regulars' appear in the stream all the time - and another set (that kinda overlaps) that I find myself engaging with - and the sum of those two communities are a tiny tiny fraction of the total count.

@Moondeer the two platforms idea ✅ - my cut is that he provides a 'hub' for aggregation and propagation ... the social media platform is ONE of many parts of the propagation story - the blog is the hub where 'it all starts' - but when stuff doesn’t start there it still arrives there.

@crlzff you are absolutely right - nothing in the mentions ... which I don't think I ever knew before. Is that the expected behavior I wonder ... or a bug?

// @manton

@JohnPhilpin Yup 😀 I’m still using @Moondeer’s bookshelves plugin before he yanked all of his plugins from the Micro.blog directory

@Moondeer interesting - was already following @heyloura - but just clicked into their list and discovered a double digit count of microblog people I wasn’t following - it is funny how often that happens - there's like whole sub communities / groups that you only randomly discover this way.

@JohnPhilpin You’re following 4542people I’m not! How do you even begin to cope with that many?

@Moondeer for what it’s worth, I think for most people, including me, there’s absolutely nothing mutual about a follow. People should follow me if they’re interested in what I have to say. That does not translate to me finding what they have to say interesting, or me wanting to read what they have to say at the frequency of their posting, etc. The best way to get me to follow is to reply to something I said with something that I find interesting. I will probably click on your name, and if I see posts I’m interested in, I might follow. That’s all there is to it. I hope more people follow me than that I follow back. This isn’t a synchronous, mutual platform.

@jsonbecker @Moondeer +1. I’ll take it further and say, I know I’m doing it right when (if) I’m following more people than those who are following me 😁

@devilgate ha - 3 more now - that you were following that I wasn't ... and in all honesty it really isn't that hard - I don’t read everything - picking up on the timeline things that peak my interest ... and as per @moondeer thread - tonnes of them aren't really active - and some that are active - don’t reply ...

@JohnPhilpin @crlzff Its expected behavior. The thought was that it would be confusing to have posts show up in Mentions if your username wasn’t obviously in the part of the post visible in the timeline. Not ideal, but not totally sure how to address it.

@manton aahh … I get the conundrum. Thankyou for clarifying.

@Moondeer 👋 from the Pacific NW

@manton I guess this is not high on the priority list, but how about showing in the Mentions timeline only an excerpt of the paragraph where the username is mentioned. Like:

... lorem ipsum dolor sit amet consecutor @manton lorem ipsum dolor sit amet ...

~130 chrs before and after the username.

@manton I should add the first time the username is mentioned. Could be that for whatever reason it’s mentioned twice (or more!)

@Moondeer Sorry for hijacking the conversation... 😬

Going back to the main topic, I guess discovery on MB is particularly unique exactly because of the dualistic nature of the platform. Everyone comes here with different needs and is looking for different stuff.

That’s why I think that there’s no right way to implement it, but ideally there should be a bunch of loosely related features and processes (for lack of a better word, e.g. weekly roundups, cc @jean) that caters to different use cases.

@crlzff I'm coming back to the whole convo later… but this caught my eye at the top of my mentions and the closing sentiment is particularly strong.

@pratik Okay, still came back the next day after waking up and skimmed… but… I mean… you and @jsonbecker have it nailed… for y'all healthy individuals that may not have reduced your IRL social circle to one a decade ago (two if you include me), proceeded to spend the better part of a decade piddling instead of building a career with that second degree (only to discover later that a BS in CS has a five year shelf life in Silicon Valley (not that you cared, you were building an iPhone app that recognized musical chord forms abstracted from their base frequencies (Major, instead of C Major)), some asshole jabs a paper clip into the bottom of your foot for what must have felt like ten seconds… you shut down… reboot… and find yourself reset to your factory settings (sans medication) just in time for an impeachment trial turn kangaroo court followed closely by a global pandemic… which f$&king blows so you figure you'll double the size of your social circle courtesy of Zoom and a super sweet woman named Susan… who, being reduced to tears hearing you (also reduced to tears) recite your first Twitter thread (which you'd spontaneously composed upon seeing Chris Davis assaulted in Oregon) encourages you to explore the neglected half of your dual brain… okaywhateveritistooearlyIlostinterestmoremoondeeravailableuponrequestpsIprobablywasntgoingwhereyouthoughtIwaswiththisitwasmoreaboutaneedforvalidationregardingworkIseeasimportantthatIhavespentacoupleyearsapparentlyreleasingdirectlyintothevacuumofspacechasingVoyager