Early days, yeah, but what I appreciate most about this place is that it's a constant reminder, at least for me, of all the ways other platforms fucked my (perhaps our) brain(s) up.
It's a very jarring experience. Posts and thoughts that take up space--that are allowed to unfold. Maybe they're big-ass pictures, or chunks of text, or weird hacky scripts doing wonderful things--whatever. On mobile, I find myself unable to scroll through 50 fucking different voices in less than 10 seconds. Instead, I have to actively engage with what's there, or make the decision to move past it. As a result, endless doomscrolling is an effort in itself--and it's not worth it. Not that it's ever been. No algorithmic pachinko bullshit to nudge you toward this and that. No obvious, public follower counts.* Rehost comments are below the original post, foregrounding what's being rechosted (sorry.) rather than imposing someone's words over it.
But what matters most to me at the moment is something I only realized today: there are people I've followed for years on Twitter whose voice I don't really know at all. Not like this. Sure, threads exist, but they're not the same. And since I mostly follow devs, journalists, and fiction writers, there's always an article or fifteen I can track down. But strictly within the frames of other platforms, I rarely got to see how people I'm fond of assemble and articulate their thoughts, how they just...find ways to perform themselves. At least textually.
It's nice and good.
*the one change I'd like to see is some version of "your friends follow that person", which (at least on Twitter) has been helpful re: discovery. Including staying away from terrible people, yeah. But then again, maybe rehosts and word of mouth (you know, actually telling others "hey, check out this person") are precious too.
