Oddbean

One weird and off-putting thing about Mastodon culture is the idea that one should use hashtags not for discoverability, but for the opposite—so that people need not be exposed to concepts that they aren't interested in…but for some reason they follow people who boost such uninteresting posts. Here somebody suggests that I use a hashtag about US politics to keep him from seeing something I wrote that has nothing at all to do with US politics. https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/111/061/012/475/931/667/original/cbb454d9d6781e8b.png

The actual mechanics of complying with this supposed norm are dizzyingly impractical. Which aspect of a post might strike people as uninteresting? Through which lenses might they not want to learn about what I'm writing? Crafting hashtags for discoverability is one thing, but for *anti*-discoverability? Am I to red-team my own posts? I receive these cheerful suggestions any time I write anything that’s widely-boosted. I've ignored them so far, and intend to continue to ignore them.