y’know it would not surprise me that years of people aggressively pulling your old takes out of context and using your cat pictures to doxx you fucks up your relationship with posting on‐line. but i also relate to this without having experienced all that; i also definitely used to Post more. part of why is a fear of that stuff also happening to me, but there are also other factors i think.
i feel like one of my primary topic filters is just worrying about what other people will say about what i post. so i’d like if cohost / mastodon let you restrict comments / replies on posts, e.g. to only pages / users you follow. and also to filter notifications to those people. but without privatizing the account. that way i can post whatever, and anyone can like / fav and share / boost my posts and even add commentary — but at the same time, i only see and worry about what the people i value are saying, as does anyone viewing my posts from my profile.
most people won’t want that though (which is probably why i don’t see social media services with these features), i think usually because they prefer being able to meet people in a public square. but my views on public spaces and user content moderation are also extremely pessimistic, so. (less restrictions are probably fine if you get minimal attention, but IME an increase in both positive and negative attention usually results in the negative attention having a greater impact even where there’s technically more positive attention, which is when you need to filter it out.)
still not all the reasons i used to post more often though. the rest of it… i think i was just younger and had more energy, and had a larger and more active (but also definitely less healthy) social circle. naturally i had more excitement about sharing stuff with people in that environment. doesn’t need fixing though; these days i much prefer keeping things quieter, even if there are aspects of that bustling setting that i miss.
…i feel like i end up just talking about myself a lot in my comments on your #real posting, but i hope my random thoughts give some food for thought still.
