I am really wondering what exactly I am hoping to get out of social media these days, a lot of the people I have unfollowed recently I don't know if I have ever had meaningful interactions with
which, I don't know, that's not necessarily a bad thing I guess
I think more than anything else I am looking for some kind of reciprocity. I have never found it all that interesting to follow celebrities on any kind of social media, like how is this different than listening to them on tv or whatever
@pagrus I feel the same - for me, fedi is for mutuality and I can indulge in parasocial following elsewhere and through other means. I can also see that it's easier to just follow, lurk, absorb than to engage meaningfully and to offer posts in return. But this is a place that rewards that effort of real connection - or maybe did in the past more generally than now. (I suspect if I landed here new now, I wouldn't really like it - it's now a place where friends are, rather than a place to meet new friends, for me)
@compostablespork@weirder.earth yeah exactly, there was a shift for me and I guess partly I am wondering when and why that happened. because I am not really looking for new/more friends here now and the more I think about it the more I feel like that's how it's been for me for a while
@pagrus I keep forgetting I need to check follow requests (it can go for months and some are friends who changed instances) meanwhile good friends have left and it periodically occurs to me I could meet new people here but then I kinda don't want to
@pagrus @compostablespork yeah i’ve pretty much just posted followers only since i moved instances (in 2021) which feels like a clear signal i’ve shifted from trying to meet new people / have conversations with people i don’t know to just trying to talk to people i already know at least a bit
i don’t think that says anything about the platform necessarily (besides that it has the tools to let me shift gears like that)—the more i make new acquaintances the more they have to be shallow ones bc i only have so much time in a day / emotional capacity
@Satsuma @pagrus @compostablespork you show up and you want to connect. stick around long enough and your connections are set, you don't really have room/energy for more
it's why it's harder to make friends in a small town, sometimes. because there aren't a lot of other new people to connect with, and the not-new people are busy with existing connections.
@twistylittlepassages @pagrus @compostablespork yeah i thought about referencing dunbars number, which is a bit of a reductive framing re:relationships but also something that does have some amount of truth to it
@twistylittlepassages @Satsuma @pagrus this makes a lot of sense! Although in a closed system there's often the appeal of the newcomer too. But fedi is the opposite of a closed system now. Used to be WE was more unified and new folks could post on local and get some love, but that seems to have waned and it's less of a community on local than it used to be. I also mostly post fo these days. Ah well
@compostablespork@weirder.earth @twistylittlepassages@weirder.earth @Satsuma@glitch.cat.family I (personally, me but also 
) are more closed than we used to be, partly because of bad actor instances but also things like fucking facebook bridges and bluesky bullshit. which are basically just bigger bad actor instances, now that I think about it. partly I have been thinking about this because I am considering just restarting the instance in some kind of allowlist federation mode
@pagrus @compostablespork @twistylittlepassages yeah my current instance is both much smaller and more proactive about defederation than by first (which is part of why i left)
@Satsuma @pagrus @compostablespork I think this is related to why we're not welcoming new folks on the WE local TL anymore. we're invitation-only and there just aren't a ton of new people joining these days, as far as I can tell? but yeah, I do a lot more followers-only posting these days too. too easy to doxx myself with my stories about where I live 
@Satsuma @pagrus @compostablespork for what it's worth, this arc Satsu just described is something I see playing out over and over in IRL communities as well