I am giving Mastodon and social media in general another go after a while. Here is what I have noticed immediately – even after years of social media detox, my brain immediately craves for next posts.
I love RSS, and the feeling when I clean my RSS inbox. I do not need more. I know I have catch up. This was the case for social media for me before algorithms. I have checked my friends feed and few people and sites I have followed and when I got around to the post I have already seen, I was done.
I have become a feed junkie.
Then infinite scroll came and it has never ended. It was one of the major reason why I have quite social media. It thought me bad habits. And the last time I tried Mastodon my brain forced me to use it in a bad way. I was craving for infinite timeline with chronological timeline so I added a lots of people so there is always something new.
Now I am following my rules, which are simple
- I only follow real people, not pages of institutions or anonymous pages
- I should first know what the person posts about regularly and see value in it (just as with my RSS sites)
- When I am done I am done. No need to constantly add new people or seek new content
Lets see how it goes. I am still skeptical and think I will quit in a couple of days or weeks, but it is good to challenge oneself once in a while. Fortunately, I already know the signs when it starts to go sideways and know to quit.