If you use one account for everything, you may not be seeing the full breadth of Mastodon. Get an account on an art instance, watch the cool art fly by the local timeline. Get an account on a French instance, bone up on your high school French. Make an instance for your coworkers, talk shop.
I don't wear swim trunks to work, I don't wear a suit to the pub, and I don't wear cargo shorts to my sister's wedding. Apply that to Mastodon and you might find it's quite natural. Decentralize yourself! 😁
BTW you may want to get used to the keyboard shortcuts for switching browser tabs, and it *really* helps if different instances have different themes, but… still works pretty well IME. 🙂
@DivineOmega @nolan I second this. I can only think of creativity.cafe
@DivineOmega @Murassa Ah yeah I'd say oulipo.social for the poetic constraints, but for visual art I was going to defer to Murassa 😊
@nolan I think it'd be an awesome feature to be able to follow instances.
@nolan hi Nolan!
How do I search for instances? 😅
@esnob you might try http://tooter.today/ :)
@bvtsang @nolan I have accounts with multiple email providers. (Gmail, work account, freelance professional account, admin accounts for various services I run, spam account, secure//encrypted account)
Most people I know have at least two mail accounts.
I have most of them in a single mail client (gmail, at the moment) but not all of them.
@bvtsang @ajroach42 Yeah true, I think another hidden element here is that public follower counts encourage this mindset of "just use one account, get all my followers there so the number goes higher." Give people a single number to judge their success by, and they will try to optimize it.
For toot.cafe it's very likely we'll cap public follower counts at 100 or so: https://github.com/tootcafe/discussions/issues/16
@nolan I've got a further account on a Dutch instance set up mostly for local tech businesses in a particular region of NL that I have some previous knowledge of and an interest in.
It is a lot quieter, I am not as prolific a tooter and behave a lot more carefully there, especially as I feel I should try and toot in Dutch and my language level is only that of a teenager, this instance is very business/tech/local focused (whilst still friendly and not overly commercial)
@nolan deliberate fractional personalities have their advantages, and are probably a more accurate manifestation of who and what we are.
@nolan ... it only just now occurred to me that you can log onto more than one Mastodon account at a time, since they're all hosted on different servers :D
@Project9501 Yup, it's likely your browser will even automatically switch the spellchecker dictionary for different URLs in case you speak different languages on one or the other. An advantage I've noticed. 😁
@nolan I like the thought, but I am busy keeping up with one instance. I really have not enough time to try and juggle more than one-and-a-half!
:(
@dBu_fs Totally understandable; I imagine some people will stick with 1, some will do 2, and some may have as many as 5 or more. Just depends on your investment in social media. 😁
@nolan That would likely be easier to do/consider if clients had multiple account support/some better migration tools. Otherwise, you're pretty hampered to having multiple tabs in (browser of choice) open at any given time or logging out/back in on the mobile client (and woe to those who use offline password vaults).
Heck, when I moved accounts updating my follow and block lists wasn't the easiest task.
@nolan uh... I'm always naked
@nolan BUT WHY? That takes too much effort. We want it all in one space.
@Barzey I think some people will; it really depends on your level of commitment to social media. One of the best arguments I can make is for multi-linguals: it avoids annoying people who don't speak one language or the other. 🙂
@nolan I'm a digital marketing consultant so I spend a lot of time on social media and its from that standpoint I speak. I have no problem having communities segmented, but it should NOT be dififcult to figure out they exist or get to them.
@nolan but how do I need these separate timelines on o a stream of consciousness?
Also, I'd be worried about increasing the noise rather than the signal.
.@nolan Mayhap there will be a web client that checks all your mastodons for you and displays them all together! A TootSuite, if you will
@nolan This is one way to use a social network. But my view is different: I have diffent interests and of course live with different roles e.g. Father, Husband, Employee, Tecky, Biker, Dancer... But this is natural for all of us and the constant is ME the Individuum. And in every role and situation I am the constant. So splitting myself into multiple accounts (beside Business/Private) is for me no option.
@vilbi I think the thing that will make the single-account system untenable is separate guidelines for each instance. E.g. let's say I'm on a G-rated instance with my kids, but I also enjoy erotic fanfiction and so I've joined an instance for that. My choice is to either have two accounts or to be banned from the G-rated instance. 🙂
Not trying to tell people how to live their lives on Mastodon, but I suspect this kind of system will emerge naturally, especially as Mastodon grows.
@nolan do you have recommendations of interesting instances?
@trodrigues See this conversation (https://social.targaryen.house/users/DivineOmega/updates/28510), also check out http://tooter.today 🙂
@nolan can you recommend a good art instance ?
@numimyon Check out this conversation 🙂 https://social.targaryen.house/users/DivineOmega/updates/28510
@nolan this is how I've used twitter lists.
@nolan hummm... I never thought about mastodon like this. I think we might need clients supporting multiple accounts to make this easier to handle
@nolan I do actually wear swim trunks to work in Thailand—but I wouldn't want to bore you with my #digitalnomadstories, and I realize I'm almost half-well-actually-ing right there which means I probably should shut up anyway ... 😜
@flakoot lucky! I want a pool party at work ☹️
@nolan know of any iOS apps that allow you to be logged into more than one instance at a time? I'm currently using Amarok.
@nolan But i'd have to manually switch between these accounts to see what's going on in each, right?
@dria Yes, true. I use multiple browser tabs. 🙂
@nolan Interesting idea
@nolan That gives me an idea for my cli client. The ability to, in a single client instance, to show the de-dupped federated timeline from multiple instances at once.