A Year Atop a Woolly Mammoth

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Introduction. 

How much wyrdstone can one a rat ogre consume in a year? Well, I don’t actually know the answer to that one, but what I do know is I have been reflecting. Not like some sort of mirror, no, but mentally, metaphorically, mind experiment with no conditions or theory. Aimlessly trapsing around my mind, I found this meander taking the shape of a pensive review of that decision a year ago to migrate from those long perceived leafy nests of Hobby Twitter to the somewhat sparsely populated plain inhabited by the thought to be extinct Mastodon.

Why are you Scribbling on your Blog?

Why? Well, I’m partial to having a good old think about things. This isn’t a sales pitch to chose one platform over another, with the far-right takeover of Twitter I reckon I shouldn’t need to do that. It’s rather self-explanatory why almost anything is better than there. Instead, what I’d like to do is just talk about two things. First, Mastodon as a hobby platform again, but this time without any comparative claptrap from me. Second, what’s my impression of the whole fossil elephant yoke.

So, what is Mastodon, or more specifically for all us hobby folks, what is the hobby side of it. 

What is Mastodon? 

Starting with Mastodon, it’s a decentralised text based social media network. That’s a lot of jargon that instantly pulls the blinds down on folks interest. Let me try and give my rudimentary lay persons grasp of that. Mastodon is a lump of coding that lets anyone set up a social media website. That website can sign up people, who are it’s users. These websites are called instances, as a user of one of these you’ll post text based messages into a chronological timeline, these posts can be supported with media. Usually these websites have a unifying interest. Warhammer.social for example, where I live, most of us like Warhammer or wargames (think, ‘Warhammer’ like your elderly relative thinks Warhammer). That unifying interest however is not the only scope of chat, there’s pictures of dogs, cats, Sunday walks, there’s discussions of food, how Irish butter is the only butter, and every other kind of nonsense that you’d expect on social media. We all just came together on our wee corner of social media as we like ‘Warhammer’. 

These little websites are paid for, maintained, and moderated in different ways, but generally it’s a community based approach to social media. For example, on Warhammer.Social our Admin running the systems side of things (and is covering all the costs! He’s an extremely nice chap), and to help out - I’ve volunteered to handle the moderation of our site. It’s a very ground up, community based system. 

So that’s what the text based social media lark is, what about decentralised. Dear reader, read on, read on. 

You’re happily sat on your wee instance. A dot on the starry and planet filled sky of the internet. In a very comforting way, you’re not alone though. All around you are other planets, wee Mastodon instances all out there doing their thing, and more instances that are revolving around other applications (PeerTube, PixelFed, Wordpress). This big old interesting galaxy of the internet, that’s the fediverse. Much like looking into the sky It takes a little while to find anything that’s up there. But much better than is implied by this metaphor - you can interact with these planets in the mastodon star system and even better all the planets in the other star systems of those other applications. 

So mastodon is the community led text based side of this corner of the internet, and it can talk to the picture, or video, or blog based side of the internet. 

Hobbyodon & The Hobbyverse.

Let me try and cover the last piece of the puzzle before I go on to describe the full picture. 

Hobby Mastodon or Hobbyodon, as it is referred to by the body-hobbitick that is me (mostly as it’s fun to say in my accent), is a collection of a handful of small-ish instances. Here’s a list of the most notable ones:

• Warhammer.Social
• Dice.Camp
• Mastodon.WSSMagazine.com
• Gamepad.club
• Tabletop.VIP
• Wargamers.Social 
• Tabletop.Social
• Rollenspiel.Social

On top of that, lots of folks have joined onto large more general servers, there’s folks over at some of the geo specific instances like mastodon.ie, mastodon.scot, aus.social, etc and even on the most general of instances like mastodon.social. 

They of these have been all chatting away to each-other already, so most of the initial teething problems of finding people have been mediated as now the links have been made between the planets of the Mastodon star system. As for the Hobbyverse, it’s still in its infancy, there are a good number of people on on the Pixelfed application based sites like miniature.photography. Simply pasting in a profile url into the search tab in mastodon will bring you to the account and once the link is made generally there a little bit of traffic that starts to flow. So while Hobbyodon is well established just now, we’re still making our way to other star systems of the fediverse. 

Altogether these things make up a community of hobbyists that are working away on their shared hobby and are chatting merrily amongst eachother. 

How does it all work for hobbyists then?

As you can imagine with all the finding each-other in this big sky, things are relatively slow and ponderous. Which is bloody lovely. There is lots of space to chat with the people you are interacting with. There’s actually a very really sincere sense of personal growth. As you make connections you end up actually having the space to chat to people, I would consider the people I chat with on the Hobbyverse friends. I really love this, and I personally feel the ponderous pace has facilitated this for me and I hear the same for many of these other friends and hobbyists. 

Another pillar of this friendly space is the lack of a dichotomy of audience and broadcaster. The body-hobbytilic are the only modifier to your viewing, they might boost someone else’s content. Moreover the slow pace and small scale has lended itself to a low bar for entry into the conversation. You simply need to engage in it, there’s a very noticeable sense of of familiarity, or the desire for familiarity on the platform. 

There’s a lot of chat about etiquette on Mastodon, that’s really just because no one has dictated it to the user through subliminal gamifying algorithms. From personal experience, instead Mastodons etiquette evolves in small communities organically. From the Hobbyodon perspective this can be demonstrated by the way in which C&C/Advice was approached. Someone asked, “do folks want that here”. What followed was a really pleasant natter among active accounts across the instances of Hobbyodon. The community arrived at a simple, when it’s asked for position. It’s demonstrative about how a community built and focused space evolves. 

Coming back to the unifier of ‘Warhammer’. This is a major strength created by it being a community space with limited mechanisms for altering the timeline for users (ie it’s chronological, with no suggested content, or promoted posts). You see a good slice of what people are actually working on, interested in. The lack of algorithmic manipulation of the timeline means you see a more varied spread of manufactures, of course as the biggest show in town Games Workshop features heavily, but it is by no means omnipresent at the exclusion of everything else. 

What I Like About It.

Personally? This mix of slow, ponderous friendship and network building approach is perfect for how I want to exist and hobby online. I’m emotionally invested in seeing how other folks I’ve met through the Hobbyverse are getting on - both personally and with their hobby projects. There’s really nothing as satisfying as getting to know someone with a common interest, watching them think a project through out loud online, and then watch their journey through to the end point. 

The relationships that you build become key to the Hobbyverse being a great space for hobbyists. You develop a network of people with that common interest who have invested a little time to get to know you and what you’re up to. There are probably no better people on the internet to chat with for personal development. I’ve had lots of solicited advice and feedback here, and people have been really happy to share their methodology and tips with me at length. It’s that familiarity with each other that opens the a space to talk paint, building, sculpting, and gaming. That familiarity and desire to have inclusion is really something I value about the Hobbyverse. 

The content is also brilliant, it’s a really varied spread in terms of manufacturer, there’s a considerable swath of 3D prints and even some self sculpting going on. That’s not yo say there’s no Space Marines, there really are a lot of them, but they are complimented by an array of other miniatures, and that really brings a nice balance to the hobby discussion. I described Mastodons atmosphere as a chat around the painting table previously, but maybe more specifically this could be a chat around a painting table in a FLGS that sells every miniature company ever, and encourages you to bring your 3D prints in to paint. There’s a really buzz of wanting to share what we love on Hobbyodon. I can’t help but think that the lack of a manipulated algorithm is key to that. It’s something I feel is unique to the Fediverse - and something I could not do without on reflection. 

The Challenges?

It’s obviously not all perfect, I’d be shocked if it was and somehow was still a niche of the internet. 

Finishing on variety of miniatures as a positive it’s probably important to start with the negative that’s it’s lack of diversity. Our Hobbyodon, and Hobbyverse isn’t reflective of the hobby as it stands. While it’s good we have some women, it’s definitely a noticeable minority, and as for demographics it’s very, very, white. There’s been a lot of discussion on discounting black experiences on Mastodon, and that’s worrying, just because Mastodon offers a positive experience for those of us who have some privilege does not mean that it extends to everyone. We ought to listen and do better, there’s racism for sure on Mastodon. Rather than being protective of this new vessel for online interaction let’s root it out - and bin it. It’s not just racism, Transphobia and a litany of other discrimination happens here. All of it needs to be isolated and dumped in the nearest deepest bin. Anyone saying that all this stuff happens elsewhere is missing the point. The status quo is rubbish, we need change, and meeting the abysmally low bar met by what’s come before is not good enough. The one hope I have on this front is the people I’ve met here are decent, they want to see positive change in society, and in their actions, so there’s hope and the right mix of people to achieve the aims of that hope. 

Beyond that heavy stuff, the rest of this might seem a bit more beige, and thankfully it is. However, these two main things are probably more uniquely an issue with Mastodon and the rest of the Fediverse. 

First, It’s not really got much mileage as a quantitative channel of influence, i.e. there is no way for a business to effectively market itself in that traditional conversion rate focused, batch and blast, “go viral” way. 

What the Fediverse is currently superb at it is the qualitative side of things, high input low but very valuable output. For a business with fixed resources, this won’t be the most instantly effective method of selling, but for an individual with no commercial focus - this is ideal. It’s very sincere interactions with other folks interested in the same thing as you. So why is that bad? A lot of the businesses we talk about here for Hobbyists are small manufacturers, commission artists, and even (the dreaded in some quarters) influencers. While that last one is very controversial - there are a lot of folks producing brilliant digital media who rely on the ability to attract sponsors. The hobby will be less rich without some of the work of people interviewing, cataloging the history of the hobby and indeed creating some of its future with independent game systems, miniatures, and hobby supplies. What’s hard about this quandary is I feel like these people should not use Hobbyodon to drive the revenue of their business, it won’t do that. What it can do however is become a space for test and learn without high stake risks to your other channels. I would use it to chat with people about the hobby and whatever angle you want to explore, build your theories here, and test them elsewhere. 

Second, hell - is this a bit of a banger held together with duct tape and goodwill by times. The official Mastodon App has got better, but it’s absolutely rubbish compared to what independent developers are doing - I recommend IceCube on iOS or Trunks on Android they are both totally different but both excellent - they should have a baby, and have all their respective functionality, it would be a lovely App baby. The systems can be a bit glitchy, and sometimes things can be down, or content can be missing, or hard/impossible to find - it’s a little frustrating at times. Not to mention this all adds to the complexity of using Mastodon, or trying to introduce someone to it. 

The Future.

That complexity is sort of a cornerstone for how I thing things will progress in another year, I think Mastodon will still be around, and will continue to grow happily. But it’ll be slow and ponderous. That’s good and bad for different reasons that will all be personal to the individual. I’d love more folks to have social media be as additive to their live as I’m finding Hobbyodon and the Hobbyverse has been for me. Yet, there’s no real way to convince the skeptics at the moment. A lot of the complaints are it’s complex, well yes, it is a bit. But that’s only because it’s a very new way of transparently doing social media on a community led level. We’ve been allowed to look underneath the bonnet of the vehicle of social media for the first time, of course it’s complex. What has happened though over the year is as the various planets and star systems of the Fediverse connect to each other, the initial complexity on start up for new people is much less intense. I reckon as we continue along that complexity will continue to be polished down as we all start to understand things better ourselves. So, the future is bright, and we’ll dawdle along to in a while, what’s the rush. 

Conclusion.

Look it’s an imperfect ramshackle of community, goodwill, and terrible terrible patter. There’s loads more I’d love to cover (Alt Text for example - please write them) but I think I’m in a mood to publish this. So let me say that Mastodon, it’s very sincere, and it’s legitimately grassroots led. I love it, I want it to be better, and I’m very happy to critique it and advocate for it. In one short year, I’ve transformed my relationship with social media to a largely positive one, that’s been additive to my life. If you’re a hobbyist who’s just keen to make some pals, and is willing to let things be slow and ponderous, Hobbyodon is for you.