Tired of timelines

I joined Mastodon. It feels very much like Twitter did in 2009. Some people are probably jazzed about that but to me, it just felt… exhausting. I couldn’t put my finger on why until I read Luke Harris’s post The Fail Whale Cascade

 I’m bored of what I call “the timeline era”. Scanning an unending stream of disconnected posts for topics of interest is no longer fun.

This is it, for me. At this stage in my life, I simply do not have the time or energy to shake my little pan in a stream of information, trying to sift out the nuggets I want to engage with.

I subscribe to the RSS feeds of personal websites (if you have one, email it to me or comment on this post!). That is more than enough content to consume each day. The thing I feel is missing from Twitter is the ease of interaction - it is so easy to mention whoever you like, strike up a conversation and make internet friends. It’s the reason I came back to Twitter after quitting for 2 years. I wanted to hang out and talk shop again.

Maybe it is just a case that if I want that interaction, I have to make more of an effort to get it: comment on people’s blogs, send emails to authors who don’t have comment forms and encourage people to do the same here. Perhaps I could get a username with my real name on Reddit and actually post in subreddits instead of just lurking.