In other platforms, I have mentioned that I left Twitter because of tulips. I've decided to write a quick thread about how that came to be - complete with lots of photos of tulips.
I was an early adopter of Twitter. Because of my marketing roles, I've run over 17 different accounts. I had communities that I took part in regularly for years. But by the first few months of 2023, I was getting tired of the bots, of the trolls. Then we went to Keukenhof gardens in Amsterdam
A thread 1/?
Aside from the hypersaturated blooms with light filtering through semi-translucent petals, and the breathtaking beauty of the spring time tulips in the Netherlands, there was something else that I noticed and observed in the botanical gardens - the crowds.
The place was jam-packed. Influencers posing, photographers shooting, families, couples. It was as crowded as Disneyworld on a Saturday. There were throngs of people milling around this garden... just to look at tulips. 2/?
Sitting on the lawn, people-watching, eating amazing frites from a food truck, I noticed how chill everyone was. There were crowds of people here to geek out about flowers. I realized in that moment that that was the version of humanity that I wanted to see. That humans, happy to have a sunny day in the Spring, happy to look at pretty flowers, happy to be dorky nerds looking at luscious plant petals... that was the version of humanity I wanted to be a part of. 3/?
As we took the train back to our lodging, I realized that my view of humanity had been skewed and darkened by Twitter - this had already happened in those early months of the current ownership. Trolling, bots aimed at creating ideological divides, and swarming to stop people from sharing opinions were already going on. The posts there were getting darker and more upsetting. The light, community, and laughter was drowned out. Twitter had made me forget that humans are dorks who like flowers 4/?
I downloaded my data, and fully deleted my account. As an aspiring author, I blew up half of my existing platform in one afternoon. But I decided that I wanted to hold onto the view of humanity that I glimpsed in the botanical gardens. I joined mastodon, bluesky, and threads - looking for a new home. The tulips are my measure for how likely I am to use any of those platforms. Does my feed make me feel dread and anger about humanity? Or does it give me a sense of hope? Of beauty? Joy? 5/?
I honestly find it harder to find people and interact on Mastodon. I have a hard time navigating the UI. But this will be a place I'll remain unless that feeling of hope and beauty eventually goes away.
Who here gives you that sense? Who do you recommend I follow?
(end thread)
Tricky one to answer though people do use the #tags a fair bit so worth checking topics you like. Also jump over to the federated feed - always a lot busier but you might see some posts you like - follow those so they will appear in your home feed.
@simoncox thanks for the tips! I will give it a shot
@AKAnderson
Also there is a Chrome extension called StreetPass for Mastodon that flags up peoples Mastodon accounts if you visit thier site - could be handy for you!
@AKAnderson @simoncox yes, unfortunately search is shot on here so hashtags are the way. You've already got lots of follow recommendations so I would just say to look up relevant hashtags and follow whoever is posting photos you like.
@AKAnderson
I'll second the tag following. Then follow people who post good things with that tag.
I find that following more than 250 people makes my timeline too busy to keep up with. But if you want more, I'd go to the profile page of those you find most interesting and peek at who they follow. I found most of my follows that way.
And another tip - I created a list called 'news' and added all the news type accounts and set that list to not appear in my home timeline! Means I can dip in and out of the news when I feel like it and not get overwhelmed with posts. You could do this with any topic of course.
@AKAnderson @loren is my #1 joy bringer
I love nerding out with @haverholm about comics and abstract art.
@emery and @madgeface and @catzilla are my homegirls
of course, you can go look through my boosts and see what sparks joy there too! <3
@artcollisions @AKAnderson @loren @haverholm @madgeface @catzilla
O hi! Good to meet you :)
@AKAnderson I'd say follow tags --
#bloomscrolling (definitely this one!)
and ones that you'll find attached often, (I'm omitting hashes to keep from spamming the hashtags) like
silentsunday
mosstodon
and, really, hashtags for things or subjects that you're interested in. Hashtags following is the best way to find subjects -- and people -- to follow on here, I've found ~
@taichara @AKAnderson I agree about the hashtags! # BloomScrolling is what made me fall in love with Mastodon.
Since the communities are smaller, you don't get a ton of spam on them. For the rare pieces of spam, it's easy enough to mute the account.
I'm still building my community here too. Among the people I'm following, I consistently enjoy the posts, boosts, and replies from @inarticulatequilter. Her quilts are amazing! She boosts a lot of interesting art, nature, etc. (+some politics)
@AKAnderson Following hastags is good way to flood your feed with your interests.
The transition is hard when you have become accustomed to a corporation spoon feeding you and tending you via algorithm. Here, you get out what you put in, as there is no one trying to tease out more screen time by force feeding you.
You may find the time based feed stifling at first. You can actually get caught up with your feed here, unlike with algorithms. Personally that is one of my favorite things - I can put the phone down eventually, done for that moment. But if that isn't you just follow follow follow.
@AKAnderson Thank you for posting that.
My father grew up in that town, next to the Keukenhof. His first job, as a teenager, was to work in a bulb-shed sorting and packing the bulbs for sale. Tulips remained his favourite flower. As he lost most of his vision, my mum put large pots with tulips just outside the window so he could still see them.
He died earlier this year, he remained a dorky nerd who was happy to look at luscious plant petals until the end.
@AKAnderson On a more light-hearted note: others have already suggested you can follow hashtags on Mastodon. If you want to connect with other flower enthusiasts, then I highly recommend following the hashtag #BloomScrolling .
@heinragas We all need to be that kind of dork, in my opinion!!
@AKAnderson moving to another platform isn’t easy. Long term twitter users had been carefully curating their timelines, Mastodon is like resetting that curation and starting over again. For me, lower my expectations and just start following people who seem to have interesting ideas and topics is helping. If you’re into nature, I suggest looking for the tag #silentsunday
@AKAnderson I feel you so much and thanks to your thread I found you!
I found the most amazing people by subscribing to my favourite tags - so every post with the tag will come into your timeline (you can easily unsubscribe, too). For flowers try #bloomScrolling. I like the calm sundays with #SilentSunday or the lush green #mosstodon and #lichensubscribe
Sometimes tags are quite crazy, hard to find out. eg the ending -todon on everything, like #bookstodon for everything with books.
@AKAnderson From subscribing tags, I discover the people I want to follow directly.
@AKAnderson I started following @FediTips to get to know the working of masto (and any question is answered!).
As a positive tooter I name @heyokyay who posts cartoons
@AKAnderson You need to see for yourself if you like these accounts, my (almost) daily sense of wonder: @Jgbird for the birds, @artologica for art and squirrels, @cris for birds and squirrels
@Kitty is running a small art instance with a lovely local timeline
Check out the hashtags #WritersCoffeeClub and #WordWeavers for the daily dose of international writers interacting and supporting each other and in case it is for you or you just wanna try the daily questions - join in!
@aurora @Jgbird @artologica @cris @Kitty these are fantastic recommendations! thank you so much!!
@AKAnderson You're welcome. I forgot @Minimus Daily visual storytelling (with so much lovely detail) about a mouse family in Latin!
@aurora Oh yes, this makes me smile every day! @AKAnderson @Minimus
@NatureMC Yes, totally. And it's like a good way of 'Kinder Surprise' egg minus the chocolate: You get a daily dose of joy, a daily dose of cute and a daily dose of learning.
(And in my case: Getting back into Latin, which I hadn't used in nearly two decades before I discovered the account).
@aurora On the point! I refresh my Latin too and wished we had a Minimus in our school!
And you can enjoy it without a Latin word.
@NatureMC My teacher was quite good and I was really into it (I was thinking of becoming a pharmacist if I couldn't study history). But there were lots of people in my year who really struggled and only chose Latin because they'd have struggled even more with French - if they had had Minimus, Minima and Silvius it would have been so much easier for them not to despair.
@AKAnderson @Minimus
@aurora Oh yes. I loved Latin but I hated all these texts about wars in our Latin book. At that time we had nearly nothing about the normal life, interesting for children.
@NatureMC @aurora @AKAnderson That's why we made the Minimus books in the first place, to bring back the joy!
@Minimus I was trying to introduce the teenager to the fun stuff section on the website - to no avail. Which is probably because the compulsory second foreign language at his school was French. If he'd been able to choose Latin I'd gotten him SO hooked early on! (Also he'd probably chosen Latin if he'd hadvthe chance because all of us adults once had it. A third new language he couldn't take on.)
@Minimus OMG, you have books ... and merch!
(I had to search a bit to find it on your website: don't be too shy to give more direct links in your profile.) @aurora @AKAnderson
@AKAnderson : What a fabulous essay. I ended up reading it twice, and boosting so my followers can enjoy it, too. I think you will like it here. Whilst gremlins and demons can still pop up on your timeline, they aren't programmed by some algorithm. Moreover, you can ignore them as color, mute them if you think it's a phase, or block them so they don't exist in your pocket universe. There are features like lists and tagged columns that can help you make something like alternative time lines you can toggle on and off ( but are admittedly clunky.) Many instances take moderation seriously, like mine does at Eldritch.cafe. My two years here have been mind expanding and enjoyable, with few trolls. I've learned much. .
As an author, I agree with @aurora 's suggestions, but I would add #pennedpossibilities as another hub for writers.i also like the tag #photography. However, beyond this, there are a huge amount of great artists and authors, and humorists, whom I follow. When I see or read good work, I visit their profile to see if it was a one-off or consistent enough I want to see more. That's how I built my follow list.
That's a long winded way of saying, you can look at my following list and others for perspective accounts. I tried to find all the sf and fantasy writers, but there's lots of other genre writers, essayists, and artists, too!
Last, if you want followers, your profile allows you to pin some posts that can describe you and give readers a reason to want to see more.
In any case, Welcome!
@sfwrtr Is it possible you mixed me and @AKAnderson up? It's Alicia's thread/essay and my suggestions.
(No worries, Mastodon can do the mixing for you.) And I agree #Pennedpossiblities (and maybe #TimeTravelAuthors and #Writephant?) is another chance to connect with people.
@aurora @AKAnderson
Thanks! That's what I get for replying immediately after waking up. I tried prevent replying to people that might not be expecting it, but forgot that I was replying to you while replying to author of the original post.
I have fixed the problem.
@sfwrtr Never mind, happens to everyone at least once on Mastodon (I don't know about other parts of the Fediverse).
@aurora @AKAnderson
I forgot but concur with you on #TimeTravelAuthors and #writephant, and will raise you #writever and #haiku.
@AKAnderson For folklore, don't miss https://ohai.social/@TarkabarkaHolgy.
@jmccyoung Hahaha thank you for the recommendation. It's a solid one because I already followed Csenge from the Twitter days, AND she was on my dissertation committee!!
@AKAnderson FWIW I'm curating my feed here as I did at the Other Place: Watch what people I like repost, check out hashtags on subjects that interest me.
@loren is a good starting point, everyone is here ;-)
@moonrabbit cute art & cute kitty
@nova super cute kitty
@cris birds & squirrels
@danmccullough nature
@nowathecat kitty!!!
@freddiejcat a lot of kitties
@Cookies very floofy kitty
@treetreed kitty
https://troet.cafe/@yudderick@toot.cat even more kitties
@jesper_linnet the fluffies kitty ever
@Trilobyter nature & other
@JimsPhotos birds!
@zvrt birds!
@mjohanning birds!
@Laszlo@digitalcourage.social & @Laszlo@pixelfed.social lots of birds
...
@VickyOuten birds!
@jimfrost breathtaking nature
@Jgbird birds!
@Maleve birds
@mchesner nature
@jonlowes birds
@Dave2022 nature
@BathNature red robins eat out of his hands
@Catlynn her garden is full of animals
@Cyanistes birds
@patrickgwalsh nature
@ChaHarper nature
@hoernchen72 birds
@McNige nature
“Who here gives you that sense?“ My neurodivergent community.
“Who do you recommend I follow?“ Depending on your interests, look for hashtags as already mentioned. You can follow some for a while and unfollow if needed. Same for accounts.
@FediFollows makes regular suggestions for accounts to follow.
Thank you for the mention
This place is deliberately structured a bit differently so that it can't be taken over by people like Musk. However, that makes it work a bit differently when you're trying to find people to follow.
There is a list of methods for discovering people to follow here:
@GottaLaff @phaedral @AKAnderson I too left Twitter some time ago. This place works a little different but there are some things that I like more.
Use more hashtags, like #bloomscrolling for tulips.
Eventually you’ll start to see more regular people on specific topics, and that is very good.
I use a lot of the photography and birding hashtags and tea ones too for example. The interaction in this way is a bit more intentional but also organic vs just randos on Twitter
@skinnylatte @GottaLaff @AKAnderson I left twitter when it was still 140 characters.
@skinnylatte
Additional you can even follow automatically Hashtags.
Therefore "Bloomscrolling" I crossed this talk.
@GottaLaff @phaedral @AKAnderson
@AKAnderson Hi, Alicia! There are lots of great people to follow here. A few that I like are @NorcalGma2, @GottaLaff, @dillyd, @EricIndiana, @Swede1952, @mastodonmigration, @65dBnoise, @SunnJax, @thisismyglasgow, @mariapopova, and @setiinstitute.
Definitely set up hashtags to follow your interests. Happy tooting!
@AKAnderson #hopepunk and #solarpunk are good hashtags! And I'd say "follow me" because that's what I write, but I also post a lot about stuff that makes me angry in the climate crisis.
Now I need to go back and read the rest of this thread...
@AKAnderson. Minimus the Latin mouse and his family have good adventures.
@AKAnderson # bloomscrolling @ orcspiration@botsin.space @ lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social
@AKAnderson looks like you've already got good advice about hashtags etc.
If the UI isn't great that's OK, there are options :) you can access the Fediverse through so many different apps and web apps. I really like @phanpy myself, if you have an iPhone I understand an app called Mona is well liked. And Tusky on android if the Mastodon native app doesn't suit you.
@AKAnderson Starting over can be difficult! We forget what it was like when we started on other platforms. And we’ve grown accustomed to the the algorithms that steered us in one direction or another. Here, we do our own steering. It can take more time, but you will find people who bring you joy and interesting ideas. Experiment and explore and see where it takes you!
@AKAnderson such a beautiful essay thread, thank you! To add to the great list of people to follow for hope and beauty, here are two more I didn't see mentioned yet ;)
@AKAnderson You can also use https://followgraph.vercel.app/ to find people/accounts to follow.
It uses your follower list to recommend other accounts that are in common. I check it out periodically to add additional follows.