More meaningful online interactions, please

Scrolling through the timeline, these are only a few of the things I’ve seen today, people on different perspectives and paths, perhaps someone…

• That finally managed to fix their printer after a system update
• Talking about seeing someone else make a funny typo
• Sharing their progress on a software project
• Letting everyone know about a cool update on their favourite game
• Celebrating being done with the work day and going home
• Coming up with a random pun/name for a pet
• Criticizing people in power that do bad things
• Saddened by all the AI and LLMs submitting bad code
• Thanking a developer for adding a new feature
• Uploading a picture of their new book they’re reading
• Sharing a picture of their super cute cat

I look at the replies, and the ones with more comments are from people complaining about AI, or from people annoyed at bad people doing bad things (or the cat, but that’s a phenomenon I’m not getting into)

The point is a lot of people engage with the negative, bad news, and such, nothing wrong with that of course, but it got me thinking…

I have around 2900 followers on my profile—a meaningless sum in the grand scheme of things—I have made lots of posts, I share my blogposts, I share my progress on my videogames, or when there is some celebration, or when I’m reading a book, or when I get stuck under the rain.

I always try to share something positive or that I find amusing or fulfilling, or just nice.

Today alone, between both of my fediverse accounts, without counting boosts, I’ve made a grand total of only 3 original posts, not a lot to be fair, but an okay amount for a regular guy like me.

The oldest one was 11 hours ago, the latest is 3 hours ago, as of the time of writing this post. I have 18 favorites (one post with 11 favorites using a popular hashtag), and 4 boosts.

None of them have a reply.

I have done my due diligence and replied about 15 times in the last 11 hours, to ongoing conversations, giving advice about watches, or surprised that someone followed me, or something else.

Only 5 of them go a reply back. I didn’t bother to count favorites/boosts for these.

A part of me feels like I am begging for attention, that I want people to reply to me or to say things to me, but really, the initial list above this post was from lots of people I stumbled upon, and they also were simply shouting to the void with nobody on the other side.

I am also fully aware, of the amount of people who can’t handle social interaction much, and prefer to acknowledge a post with a favorite and move on. With nothing to add to the conversation, this is very fair.

But why does it seem like everyone has something to say about the negative things going on? Why do people come together only to complain about things that a lot of the time don’t make us feel good?

Don’t get me wrong, mobilizing and raising our voices against evil is noteworthy. But many times we fall on nihilism and doom instead, and we don’t actually do any better after that.

This post is somewhat inspired by Ana Rodrigues’s post: “Tell the speakers that you liked their talks “, and in my head still lingers a post from Jane saying she quit Mastodon. Give them a read if you want to.

I am not quitting or anything, but I feel like the Fediverse and most social media with humans using it, has become a little more silent than before when it comes to talking about normal everyday things, focusing too much on big themes and controversies or something along those lines.

To be clear, the Fediverse doesn’t use an algorithm, the reach of what I share is limited to the chronological timeline, so things can vary because of many factors I can’t really account for.

Even so, I don’t know, just food for thought…

On a positive note, the stars aligned and I somehow got like 5 emails on my inbox this week, one of them in the last 24 hours, so that’s always a win in my books!

And I still have plenty of fun on the Signal groups and Discord communities I’m on, so yeah, who knows.

Maybe I am just an attention-seeker who is annoyed at the lack of comments on my posts. I work very hard to come up with them!!

Okay, but, for real, I think we should choose to engage with things that make us happier! So if the post or article or picture a person shares does that, I invite you to let them know!

This is day 36 of #100DaysToOffload