Member-only story
The Compassionate User’s Guide to Mastodon
There are plenty of “idiots guides” but what about a guide that’s kind?
The Tamagotchi was the coolest invention around the year that I first started to use the Internet. It was the most basic level of Internet usage, just using my dad’s giant desktop computer to poke around on NetScape looking for information on Sherlock Holmes (I was, clearly, a pretty cool eight-year-old). I grew up using the Internet, learning to write and communicate through it… and it still has a learning curve for me.
These days, I teach people how to use technology, especially older people who are confused and often frightened by the interfaces in front of them. While some of us want sleeker, slimmer, and totally “intuitive” controls, many of these people just wish designers would start putting big buttons back on everything again.
The first thing I remind these people, is: I am also still learning! I may seem like I know what I’m doing, but there’s always a new hill to climb, a new cyber-vista to explore. And then I remind them that it is okay not to have all the answers. It is okay to make mistakes. Mistakes will happen, gaffes will occur… what matters is learning with patience and self-care.
That’s exactly what’s happened to people during this migration from the corporate-owned Twitter to the publicly distributed Mastodon. The world of social media is undergoing a sea change, and a lot of people are confused, angry, and afraid.
I’m here to tell you: that’s okay.
And I want to also say: Social media can be so much better than you’ve imagined.
What I want to do in this guide is walk you through the fundamentals of how to use Mastodon. I’ll show you how to bring as many friends over from Twitter as you can, and how and how to make sense of everything that seems so confusing right now. I’ll show you, one learner to another, that patience and compassion are the best companions on any journey of technology.
Want to read all my articles about Mastodon in one place? Check out my Mastodon article index!
