Wowza, already been a year huh?
It’s actually been just over a year since I joined Infosec.exchange. I was on Mastodon.Social for a while actually, but moved across a few months later.
This is just a quick post I wrote in an hour or two, Looking back on my experience so far.
I joined Twitter sometime in 2016. I had a few content creator friends, and at the time I wanted to work in video games. I was at high-school and I wanted to find an online community. Twitter was the place for that! I connected with a few people and got a few followers. I fell into ‘Web Dev’ Twitter. There were a few ‘big players’ who everyone seemed to follow, and they all seemed to interact with each other. It was nice, but I felt that my follower count (A whole 80!) made me feel like I couldn’t interact with these big accounts.
I didn’t feel like I was a part of a community. It felt more like I was an outsider. I’m sure some of that came from being an anxious guy, but follower counts really seemed to matter.
I still spent most time on my phone scrolling through Twitter. It seemed like any film news, local news, random memes, or random drama sprouted there. It felt like I knew what was going on, but still just felt like I was watching on.
I thought it was neat when some verified people followed me. They were working the video game industry, so I thought that I had a good way into the industry. People were posting their cool Unity/Unreal projects, and I felt like when I eventually started to make things I’d be in a good place.
Eventually I started finding the Video game industry boring. I prefered making scripts that do one thing well, rather than a whole complex system. The ‘Web Dev’ community I was a part of seemed to have good guides, so I felt like I was in a good place.
Moving to Mastodon
I moved to Mastodon soon after Twitter was in the talks to be sold off. I didn’t want to be on a platform ran by Elon Musk. I already didn’t like the guy and I could see weird changes coming.
As I mentioned above, I moved to Mastodon.Social to begin with. It was the largest instance, so I thought it would be a good way to tell what Mastodon was all about. This was also the time where I was getting disallusioned with software development. I was stressed from work and I didn’t know what to do. Everyone on Mastodon seemed chill. I liked that favorites and boosts weren’t (really) that obvious. It made me feel like I could interact with any post I saw. When I did start interacting with posts I was surprised how common it was for someone to interact back. Mastodon felt like more of a community than Twitter ever was. People were posting interesting things, and I quickly gained well over the amount of followers I had back on Twitter.
Accessibility and inclusivity seemed to be a big focus. People who would be relentlessly mocked on Twitter had a home on Mastodon (This is from what I’ve seen. I know there’s some issues). It was cosy.
Infosec time
I moved to Infosec.Exchange in April. I was at a stage in my life where I wanted to get a job in InfoSec and was studying hard for my Security+. Infosec.Exchange was the biggest InfoSec adjacent instance, so I decided to move over. It was fun! I started interacting with names I recognised. I made some friends and felt like I was finally a part of a community, rather than just watching one from the outside.
InfoSec is fun. The people in InfoSec are cool, and I love being a part of the community.
I’m sitting at 407 followers at the moment. I don’t give too much weight to numbers, but it’s nice getting interactions on my own posts now. I feel like I’m a part of a nice little hacker community now. It’s great.
Conclusion
Not much to say here. This wasn’t a big breakdown about why Twitter is bad. I just like Mastodon, a lot.
Thanks to everyone who follows me or interacts with my stuff. Thanks to Jerry too, I was never going to pay for Twitter but I happily throw money towards the InfoSec shitposting site.
Thanks for reading