The original title to this post used the word agonising. It was a bit too strong, but perhaps displayed the annoyance and thought that I have put into not repeating the same social media mistakes. In its simplest form, I can’t decide what to do with my social media usage, and that means I’m doing everything just in case.

The issue all stems from Twitter. I can’t allow myself to get to a stage where I feel like I have to use a noisy service that’s bad for my brain. Mastodon used to be that place, but as the user base has ramped up more and more, I’m starting to feel like it will become just another Twitter. I’ve written about this before, only the day before deciding to go all in on micro.blog to help stem the noise.

This helped to start with. No boosts, no local and federated feed to lose myself in—bliss. However, all I did was follow everyone on Mastodon in a worse app. Without the filtering and muting available on Mastodon directly, I couldn’t bare to open the app. It ruined the one refuge away from the noise, so the solution was to go back. Unfortunately, two weeks on and several Elon decisions later means the user base has swelled even more and there’s now brands there!

I need a space that lets me interact with people but doesn’t burst my brain with a constant stream of ‘stuff’. Perhaps this place will never exit, or that I need to put some work into curating my feed. This was pointed out to me by Twitter users when I complained about similar issues there. I remained in the mindset that if I have to put loads of work in to make it right, it’s not the best place to start with.

I have hope that Mastodon calms down a bit, or that I can perhaps find an app that lets me filter things more granular. Turning off boosts perhaps or putting people into lists. Whatever the solution is, there is one thing for sure—I will keep fretting over it for no good reason.