@codl I hope that you don't mind that I made and disseminated numerous copies of the above to show my friends without your prior approval ?
You are of course credited on said distributed copies.

@codl hahaha! This is very true! Also, you get much more actual interactions from those "tiny numbers" than any big social mdia imo

@codl Mainstream social media makes us really devalue the meaning behind those numbers.

It's like how YouTube videos are only considered "successful" if they are at least in the hundreds of thousands or even millions of viewers. Can you visualize a million people? Can we even grasp what this number means?

Hell, I recently had a post with over a hundred reactions. Over one hundred humans who enjoy my rambling. That's insane.

I'm glad Mastodon is helping us put things into perspective again.

@codl if 20 people came up to me i'd run away

@codl i mean, yeah, i can believe a room full of people occasionally liking something i said and maybe even sharing my remark with others

but i can't properly conceptualize a stadium of people cheering at something i said or did. it just doesn't seem realistic

@codl remembering this is very important

@codl i liked it when you said that, well done

@codl and those 20 people are real people. not 5000 bots.

@codl The internet has really warped most peoples' sense of scale. It's an odd phenomenon.

@codl These numbers are only tiny to people who can't think with anything than ever growing capitalistic numbers, always more, always bigger, always chasing an ever-evading growing goal of owning more and making more money out of it!

To us "mere mortals", it's always a treat, however small these numbers are 😁

@codl@chitter.xyz If I get even a single person telling me over #IRC/#Matrix/whatever that they read my blog post and they liked it, I'm already happy. I rather have 1 real person enjoying what I make than a million bots who just make an API call and never truly engage over it.

That's what makes the #Fediverse a nice place to me, there's less interactions, but they're all with real people, making them much more meaningful.

@codl I don't think I ever had 20 likes on something I've posted in my life, except my Harry DuBois cosplay pics in r/discoelysium

@codl My most numbersy tweet got 14,822 likes. My most numbersy toot got... 42 faves.

But I genuinely feel like the people who faved the latter meant it more.

@codl This - also, at this point I don't actually care about likes or shares any more, I just don't want my feed full of hate. The fediverse does that for me.

@codl
So true, and also a bellwether when something gets no interaction and you're like "okay I need to review what I fucked up there" :think_eyes:

@codl absolutely!! I don't think we're wired for that much attention & reach. At least it's overwhelming for me to even think about 'going viral'. Yikes!

@codl i don't make that post but i do joke about it elsewhere and yeah same feelings

of course my post about how 20 likes is a lot actually would absolutely blow up like this

jsyk i muted the thread

@codl after having a few posts on Twitter "do numbers" I'm happy that now I only get attention from people who wanted to see my post.

I'm fine with 3-50 boosts. I'm fine with zero boosts and 10 likes too.

@codl This reminds me of what @chriswere said in his PeerTube channel at some point, "if I made a speech and fifty people came to see it, I'd be floored".

But I think this attitude comes from the difference between the way people interact with content here compare to mainstream social media.

@codl remember there is no engagement algorithm. Comparing ‘numbers’ is meaningless because this entire thing is self-organizing. It’s completely different from a top-down approach that keeps everyone’s funnel full and coming back for more.

@codl no i think when people say this they mean it genuinely

like on here i know if i get 20 florps that's like 20 real people that actually organically saw my posts and to click the florp button because they presumably liked it
it's not like 20 bots or 20 users mindlessly scrolling through Algorithmic Content

@codl@chitter.xyz this is so nicely put, well said
​:hr_longline2:​
WARNING: this user will kiss you (it will unless u dont want to)

@codl the worst thing about Twitter is when something does big numbers and the replies make you realize that a significant portion of the people liking/retweeting don't understand that it's a joke or are laughing for the wrong reasons, or non-joke science-oriented posts being dunked on by the smug and dumb. Somehow that's worse than obscurity. I'd rather get a reply or RT from one of my known-smart or known-funny mutuals than a few thousand randos. Smart:dumb ratio is much better here, so far.

@codl It's not a numbers or influencers game. It's about the interaction.

@codl i get 1 star and im browsing wedding dresses

@codl Fair, but also, I know regularly see toots getting hundreds or retoots and thousands of likes or more so doesn't seem to be true anymore anyway XDDDD

@codl it's strange, it's not unusual to be proud of yourself acting in front of like, twenty people at a local theater. or a thousand at a sports event, ten thousand at a is a big deal at a concert.

people on the internet act like 1M is the minimum. oh you only touched the lives of 100k people what a shame. you should give up

@codl fedi culture is just appreciating that folks are there in the first place, instead of focusing on the numbers.

@codl I feel like the experience is getting better every day. There's enough regular posting user base, and still gloriously no ads or weird algorithm mind games.

@codl Yeah legit. People don't put that into perspective lmao

@codl social media has desensitized us to the fact that there are real people running all these accounts and instead turned them into little numbers, etc ......

@codl some lovely people have straight up told me "i love when you make posts like this" before. fedi culture is glorious. i love how we actually have a social media experience on here instead of everyone being scared to talk to each other like on other sites. and i have never done more numbers than i have on mastodon. love it here.

@codl I think part of it, consciously or subconsciously, is recognized that this interaction wasn't whipped up by a-log magic, no?

@codl
honestly considering how little interaction I got on tumblr and twitter, I'm getting MORE on mastodon anyway. its actually really nice and people seem to care more about my photography here

@codl My numbers here have always been much better than they ever were on Twitter! Thing I've noticed here is posts tend to circulate longer, and even once they're buried they tend to reappear more often.

@codl@chitter.xyz I'd be happy with even just one person doing either of those.

@codl I actually got pretty similar interaction on Twitter as here, but with way more followers.