Notices by Cleo of Topless Topics (toplesstopics@eldritch.cafe)

@valhalla
That's the problem with non-capitalist tech ventures... No money for a user-friendly interface speciality department, so the only people seeing the tech are deep in the tech world and won't understand the limitations non-tech people face in trying to use it 🙃 (I can barely use mastodon, and certainly haven't found a concise and unintimidating way to explain how hashtags [don't] work, to convince other non-computer-programmers to join)
@aehdeschaine

@aehdeschaine
Until my dad died two weeks ago, I was so on the fence about getting an Alexa or something similar, because he JUST DIDN'T UNDERSTAND how to use ANY device using his hands, no matter how I dressed it up with color coding and tactile buttons. I mean, a single-button toddler's walkie talkie confused him. Man I wish we had accessibility options for people who can't handle anything visual or tactile, that didn't constantly spy on you and send your data who knows where.

@slothrop
Betting odds are that any apparent "femaleNess" from the subject increases chances of their appearance being categorized as nudity by 89.64%
@schratze

@forteller You think this is "coherent"? You could replace him with a DJ board programmed with sound clips of his "greatest hits" and it would be indistinguishable.

I find myself reminded of many years ago when I still used Facebook, of no longer mentioning my dog's bad behavior (when he was still a puppy) because EVERY time I did, I was flooded with unsolicited advice (almost always by cis men!) and this was a group of people I at least somewhat knew, not total strangers.

Like, I get the desire to connect with someone by replying to their story with one of your own. But this is more than the often-autistic thing of "I'm attempting to show you empathy by describing a similar situation I experienced." It's jumping to "THIS is how you SHOULD handle this situation," almost entirely at people who DIDN'T ASK FOR YOUR ADVICE.

Consider the massive difference:
"I'm looking for alternatives to (name of tech thing, service, whatever)" vs "I'm having issues with (tech thing)"

One is a direct solicitation of advice. The other is a gripe.

You CAN, by my own standards of internet etiquette (others may vary), reply with something like "I had that issue too, that's why I started using (alternative tech thing)." that is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT from "you SHOULD use (alternative tech thing) because (tech thing you're currently using) is trash."

I mean, the difference is obvious to me, but judging by the posts by so many others dealing with #replyGuys, it apparently isn't? And yes, I do think #whitePrivilege and #malePrivilege do play a role, because it's simply the reality that our culture places the utmost value on the words spoken by people who are white, male, or both. You don't have to choose privilege to benefit from it.

Anyway this post, itself, is a gripe/rant, and is not, in fact, a solicitation of advice for how to deal with reply guys. Feel free to reply with your own experiences with them, but for the love of Apollo, please DON'T reply with anything that can be boiled down into "you should..."

Or you're just further exemplifying the very issue I'm right now griping about 🙃

Work-in-progress quote I just thought of:

More than ever, this year's presidental election remains a choice of "pick your poison." Nonetheless, do you pick the smaller dose of poison that will kill you slowly, leaving you time to look for a cure? Or the poison that will kill you rapidly, and take out millions of marginalized people with you?

#USPol

Don't @ me with "just vote third party/don't vote at all." a wasted vote is a vote for Trump, don't delude yourself otherwise.

A panel from the #graphicNovel adaptation of @neilhimself
's book #Coraline drawn by P Craig Russell that immediately made me think of " #aiArt" 😏

(I hope I'm tagging the real Neil Gaiman and not an imitator... We gotta get him off mastodon.social if he is; half the smaller instances have already defederated from @mastodon.social for not having sufficient moderation 😅)

@attacus I like the ones where you set them out by weke or month as well. They get mocked a lot as something only old people use but they're actually really useful.

Lol this dude is really complaining that #barbie made more box office money than two yet more superhero movies (and Flash was extra plagued with controversy since Ezra Miller turned out to be a creep)

@Radical_EgoCom "joe biden hates black..." Jee I wonder if they're a rightwinger who paid for their blue check 🤪

@Radical_EgoCom that's not why someone would name themselves that on twitter, though.

@atomicpoet
also-also, content warnings are buggy AF, and another huge turnoff for mainstream platform users. on every app that has the option, I check "auto expand every content warning," yet still on most of them, any post, even my own, gets truncated to only a few words, requiring me to manually expand every single paost, including in a thread. it's an unreasonable expectation if you want people to fully explore a thread, or keep up with more than a small handful of people you follow who post no more than a few times a day.

it also, again, is a huge detractor for content creators, who know that 99% of people are not going to bother pressing "expand to read more," so time and effort wise, there's no point in not continuing to post to mainstream sites. but I understand how people with a lot of triggers around things that the majority of people wouldn't consider triggering, like food and eye contact and pictures of dogs etc, and therefore wouldn't think to censor ahead of time, and if they don't also put it as a hashtag, then auto-filtering out that term doesn't work either (I think?)

sorry this is getting rambly, what I'm trying to say is, if the goal is to leech people away from toxic mainstream platforms, then there have to be existing carrots to lure them here, and not hide each carrot behind a locked cage. but at the same time, for those who don't want anyone they haven't pre-approved for giving carrots to, to not have the key to THEIR cages. does that make sense? lol

@atomicpoet
an addendum to this idea, which I agree with (hence the boost). I understand that a lot of masto users want to keep their posts from being easily searchable outside of their pre-approved pool--and that's great, more power to them. certainly I have posts sometimes I don't want any random person seeing and turning into a "reply guy" on.

but on th he other hand, some of us WANT our posts to show up for others, namely #contentCreators like me. I don't put 20+ hours into filming a video essay extolling the values of #feminism, #lgbtq #genderEquality, etc for just a small handful of existing supporters to watch. and people who are interested in finding more material on a certain subject (outside of programming and infosec 😜) are going to quickly give up on mastodon if every time they search for something like, say, #vidcon, they get no results.

if the goal is really to encourage others to leave "siloed" mainstream platforms, there has to be content here to fill the void that the corrupt platforms currently fill (at the expense of personal data and arbitrary #censorship). it's like saying "don't go to McDonald's, come to this amazing mom. and pop restaurant instead!" but there is no visible menu and you have to know someone who knows someone that knows what the restaurant offers to even order food in the first place.

BTW putting hashtags in front of things like I did in this post makes me want to vomit, because it feels like I'm trying to be a sell out, but I have to do it if I want to open up the conversation for people who don't already follow @atomicpoet or people who boost him?)

@atomicpoet
I just don't understand what the difficulty is in establishing some way to intentionally opt-in to set certain posts as "visible to anyone on the fediverse," not just people in your instance or who people in your instance already follow. like a bulletin board in a town square vs a bulletin board in a niche tabletop gaming store.
@drupalthoughts