Recently one of my Mastodon posts accidentally went viral. Turns out, it’s not hard to make a viral post if you’re observant. On Mastodon, it’s usually saying something bad about AI. You just wrap the same talking points in 5 different memes until one of them works.
The thing is, what are you going to do with these likes and boosts? Eat them?
For a moment, I almost did. When my phone started ding ding ding, I got a hit of adrenaline, then dopamine. I thought if I kept posting the same thing, I’ll have a bazillion followers in no time. Then my phone kept ding ding ding, and I got a hit of hollowine. Then it all felt so empty and meaningless.
I thought about the people who post the memes, ride the controversies, say the things people want to hear. And then the numbers go up. And then there’s no and then. Just the numbers go up.
This is not a jab at Mastodon. Mastodon is a social network the same way old BBSes were social networks. But years of Twitter trained us to use social networks to promote our work. Then we confuse the place where we hang out with the place where we do business.
You’re singing in a bar and people put bread in your jar. What are you going to do? Sing them another song, you piano man?