One thing about me is that I am an avowed hater of change, by which I mean I am a baby, and that my phone – which has not seen a software update since 2017, thanks for asking – regularly carks it when I try to do things like send an email or message a friend or press any button. My feelings towards downloading a new app are the same that others might have towards skydiving: a fear of leaping into the unknown, and also death.
Unfortunately, the other thing about me is that I am masochistic, which is how I find myself downloading Mastodon – the platform that has been touted, to varying degrees of certainty, as the replacement for a slowly crumbling Twitter now owned and micromanaged by the world’s neediest billionaire.
Despite its name, which makes it sound like a dating app for either metalheads or palaeontologists, Mastodon went viral last month. On Twitter, as staff numbers dwindled and advertisers left in droves, a mass panic set in. People bid adieu to each other in dramatic posts broadcasting all their other social media accounts. There was a real end-of-days vibe – the likes of which I hadn’t seen since the night before 21 December 2012, which is the night I decided to pack an emergency bag of muesli bars in case the apocalypse actually happened the next day and I got hungry.
Enter: Mastodon, the muesli bar to the Twitter apocalypse – a social network promising an experience driven by users, not dollars; a network without algorithms or ads. And people bought into it. An estimated 3 million have joined in the past month alone.
It takes me a few weeks to sign up. Many times, I get close – only to be derailed by two hours of stalking my nemeses on Twitter and shaking my fist at their successes. When I finally tap on the app for the first time, it opens on an illustration of cartoon elephants (sorry, mastodons) that makes me think I have accidentally downloaded Neopets.
The first thing it does is tell me to join a server. This is because Mastodon is a fediverse, which sounds like something to do with fedoras (m’astodon) (sorry), though it actually just means it’s comprised of individually moderated groups who can communicate with each other. Anyone can start a server, and they’re mostly centred around geographical locations or interests; the app encourages me to search through them using a series of headings: art, music, journalism, activism, etc. I note that there are no servers under “art” or “journalism”, though there is a server for furries.
I spend about 30 minutes on this choice, only to find out later I had been overthinking it: you can freely see and talk to people from other servers, though only posts from your own community will show up in your feed.
I contemplate going with the generic Mastodon group, which, at 149,000 users, seems to be the most popular. But at the last minute I waver. My first and only streak of patriotism runs through me: I join an Australian server called aus.social, which makes me feel as though I’m joining a swingers party or a year 11 formal.
Phew. Tap. Next screen.
It’s a page of rules – similar to those you might see in a Facebook group, with different rules across different servers. “Do not break the law (Australian),” this page says. OK, loser, I think.
At last I am in – and, within seconds, the app has started glitching: reloading at random intervals as if designed to torture me. The cartoon elephants mock me with their stupid gleeful smiles. Please, I pray, if you stop freaking out I promise I won’t make fun of your ridiculous terminology any more. On cue, it stops glitching – and then I realise its equivalents of tweets are called “toots”. I want to toot toot chugga chugga outta here.
The next morning I return to an empty feed and immediately begin following people. There is no easy way of finding your Twitter mutuals on Mastodon but I am voracious. I follow people until I am sure I have an RSI. Editors, colleagues, friends, even – to my horror – politicians (see above, filed under masochism). I follow people I hate. I follow people who hate me. I follow George Takei.
As far as I’m concerned Mastodon is a tabula rasa and all social relations are reset to zero. I feel high after my following spree.
Days pass. The high passes with them – and is replaced by a brutal comedown. I have now spent hours on this app and the only things I have seen are pets, waterfalls and George Takei reposting hundreds of toots a day with dense blocks of text that make me miss character limits.
I flick over to the explore tab, which features popular posts across Mastodon. “This one makes me laugh every year,” someone has written above a Christmas meme that I am positive has never made anyone laugh.
It all feels a bit … stale? The more I scroll, the more a pang of longing blooms within me for the unbridled insanity of Twitter: the last haven for those of us (me) who want to spend their time watching people tell on themselves in devastating fashion; the only real home for the internet’s worst dregs of discourse; where cooking is fascism, having a coffee is classist and playing fetch is animal abuse.
Perhaps Mastodon will soon be corrupted too; for the sake of all its users who are there for earnest discussion (yuck), I hope it remains unsullied in its vision: a utopia that feels nothing like Twitter, and everything like the halcyon days of early Facebook chatter, with cat photos existing alongside personal screeds that bear little consequence.
I click back to the home screen for one last glimpse, and – like clockwork – it glitches and freezes.
Michael Sun is Guardian Australia’s editorial assistant for features, culture and lifestyle. Twitter @mlchaelsun Mastodon [redacted]
