Mastodon is full of interesting people, but deficient in personal connection. I have a few people on here that like to engage with my toots, but no friendships or creative collaborations have developed from it. Something about the style of interaction on here doesn't lend itself to forming friendships, and people prefer to keep a certain distance.
@Igeljaeger Perhaps if there were small chat rooms centered around interests. I've never made a friend in a big chat room. It's always the small ones where the same group of regulars show up and discuss a particular topic, or participate in the same activity. I made many of the Internet friends I had in my 20s through systems like Groupboard and Paintchat, and later, my own Sketcher system.
@Igeljaeger The sweet spot seemed to be about 5-8 people. Beyond that, it would start to get chaotic and impersonal.
@thor @Igeljaeger Even if there are more users in the room, as long as there aren’t more than 5 people in the conversation at any one time…
@thor This could may be due to your nordic temperament
@bithive Maybe, but take a look at what I just wrote in this thread to another poster about making friendships in my 20s.
i don't make connections in the really real
why should online be any different?
as above, so below
here i make more connections but my connections in the world are so faint that some is infinitely more than none
@thor This is interesting to me because one of the first things I stumbled on when I got here was the #MusicCollab by @awhaleslantern and I have personally commissioned art for some of my own projects from 3 different people so far.
And I think I am making friends with some, albeit slowly. That's OK; I can do slowly.
@artsyhonker @awhaleslantern Now I am wanting the ability to follow a specific hash tag in my time line...
@awhaleslantern @thor I use a peanent column in Subway Tooter.
@awhaleslantern @thor permanent, I just can't type
@artsyhonker @thor you can also use pinned columns for hashtags in the normal web interface ☺️ for what it's worth, I feel like I've made a lot more personal connections on Mastodon than on other networks 🙂🌸
@thor I'd agree with you to an extent, but personally I feel that there is quite a good community on the instance I use, with people interacting with each other quite a lot. I've made connections on there and with people from other instances too. But it generally happens when I make the effort -- people often don't make the first move to communitate.
@thor I have noticed the same, ans guess it is partly because of a relatively sparse user base. Do you know if there has been any mastodon-related meetups in Norway?
@thor I have the same kind of feeling. I also find it difficult to use private messages. Maybe hashtags could be used a bit like chatrooms…
@sdm I'm trying my best to pretend that guy doesn't exist. I had a debate about racism in the United States with him and learned that he was about as narrow-minded about white people as he claimed that I was about black people. Every attempt I made at concluding in a way we could both agree with prompted another personal attack from him. At that point, I concluded that his intentions weren't good / he was disturbed / he had a chip on his shoulder, and I blocked him.
@thor I think it needs something like a live text chat to go beyond just shitposting at eachother to pass the time