#theseptemberthatneverended — Public Fediverse posts

#Mastodon has provided a social media experience similar to when I first got on #TheInternet - The Relay (EFNet), #Usenet , and the like - which is something I haven't encountered in a long while. It would seem that the reason is that we self-selected: the user base here is composed of people who understand what the medium is and how to use it.

That still blows my mind. In the late 80s, while in college, I went from "What's the Internet?" to a user in a fairly short time, in retrospect. It seemed like I was doomed to be an eternal novice at the time, but I was around some very sharp people in college, with whom I shared some nice, quirky socialization, including in the budding Internet culture. The point is, I learned, and joined as a result.

Others just...couldn't, for some reason. The entire concept was foreign and therefore we had this entire medium more or less to ourselves until #TheSeptemberThatNeverEnded , and the wave of randoms, bros, capitalists, bad crazies, and just the normies out there who eventually joined up as well.

It is clear in retrospect that everyone had the basic #intellectual capacity to figure out how to use the Internet. The slow adoption was a matter of...I don't know, perhaps a failure of imagination? An ability to conceive of things beyond immediate experience? A fear of - or a revulsion by - the unknown? I haven't a clue, really.

Getting back to Mastodon and the #Fediverse in general - I'm seeing that lack of understanding among others outside the techsphere, even though the concepts behind them seem fairly trivial to resolve. And again, the discourse here is different from the norm as a result. I started to say "more intellectual", and that is true, but it isn't simply that. There are more varieties of people here. There are deliberately obtuse avenues of thought and conversation, designed to encourage whimsy and provoke heterodoxy.

I don't know exactly why these things - new discursive media and nourishing interaction - should go together, but they do seem to. And I'm glad for that.

There is still more to say, but my thoughts are jumbled and there's dinner to get.

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