@susankayequinn@wandering.shop
Do you believe that, if you started over from scratch, following only people who made interesting posts in the trending timeline, that your experience would be more-or-less the same as currently? That, to me, is a more reliable test of the universality of your experience.
Not to dismiss your personal experience. I just think it would take some careful research and data collection to extrapolate it to everyone.
@susankayequinn@wandering.shop
For me, the infuriating thing about all online "communities" is that they are free-floating fragmentary societies where people only bring parts of themselves. Worse, they have little or no real history or continuity. Even those that seem to be stable (like, I don't know, Twitter) are extremely fragileβfar more so that IRL cultures.
Then again, IRL cultures are also growing more ephemeral, in proportion to our ability to join and leave them.
Maybe the benefit of a larger online forum, like Bluesky, as long as it still has sane people in chargeβor at least in the majorityβis better moderation, whether official or otherwise.
It's all a bit "experiment", except it has no controls, no supervisors, and no real experimental goalsβ¦