I think it’s much more difficult to find people to follow. I personally struggle a lot, and will likely either gave up the micro-blogging system or try another platform. It was great on Twitter before Musk bought it, but since I left, I have yet to find an alternative.

I tried to replace Twitter by Mastodon but, in the end, I just left Twitter and don’t use Mastodon at all. The main reason I think is because the « onboarding » is painful. I never succeeded to find interesting people to follow. I faced many ghost accounts from people posting once a month or stopped a few years ago.

If you don’t find people by yourself, no one is going to see your posts and so, you won’t be able to find new people to follow by posting.

I don’t like what Twitter became, but the base principle of the algorithm (before it became X with the paid subscriptions) was working great for me. I was constantly adding new people to the mix, and removing inactive ones every month.

If I struggled this much with Mastodon, I am not surprised many people create an account and leave a few days / weeks later.

I do not disagree about the fact that people are free to say what they want. It’s just that, as a user appreciating Nintendo, I am facing very negative comments on most (if not all) subjects even when Nintendo is not doing anything (like my example above about a romhack). For some people, it seems like it’s not about expressing your opinion about the subject, but your opinion about Nintendo on any subject merely mentioning Nintendo.

And it’s like that for many companies (Nintendo is just one example). As a consequence, I do not participate at all (I am just reading the news, trying to avoid the comment section). It’s not very healthy, and I hardly believe people discovering the fediverse will stay long if most messages they see are hating comments about what they like.

I think it’s even more common among more general communities. But even niche communities like retrogaming can be like that.

Just to give a concrete example, I have seen a post about a pretty cool mod on Zelda ocarina of time where they integrated Pikmin, it has 50+ ups, and a single comment saying they can’t wait for Nintendo to shut it down. What’s the point ? And I see this more and more. It’s not the minority but the majority of the replies I see on such posts. It’s not healthy at all.

Not so serious subjects (I prefer to relax while being on the fediverse :) ). Anything related to Facebook / Apple / Nintendo / Disney is almost always filled with comments full of hate. It is much easier to find good communities for that on Discord for example.

See, in the past, I used a lot Twitter to keep up with news about my interests. It was easy to filter out bad users by banning them, and following more « positive » people. I left when it became « X » because I had less interactions and much more ads (probably a consequence of letting users pay to gain visibility). I hoped the fediverse would replace it.

In a sense it worked, because I get a lot of news. But now, I am worried to read the comments or even comment myself because people are most of the time not kind at all. More specific communities have not this issue, but the fediverse is so small that you are forced to be part of more general communities and face the general harsh talk of most people.

Probably not the same kind of « enshitification », but I think the fediverse creates small communities, and sometimes, it’s difficult / impossible to find non-aggressive communities for some subjects.

It’s not really solving the issues caused by the users themselves, especially when communities are not big enough to justify big moderation teams, and those people have no incentive at all to be « kind » (it’s hit or miss I would say). Instead of 1 big community with good moderation, you can end up with many small communities with little or bad moderation.

I have no solution to propose, it’s probably inherent to the fediverse.

Always a nightmare for me as well. It can take me 30 minutes just to come up with 2 sentences. I usually try to make a « joke » related to something « important » that happened to the person during the year (or « generic » stuff like « one more year passed bla bla bla »).

It’s a source of a lot of stress, especially when sometimes, someone gives me a pen and a card and forces me to come up with something right now.

Yes, it takes time to get used to it, but it’s almost automatic at some point :).Thanks for the playlist, I will have a look at it ;).

I mainly played Project Diva for 10+ years, but now I also play Theatrythm FF. I think I would love Pop n music but never have it a try (the special controller looks so good :) )

Listen to music when shopping or at work (especially if I am surrounded by noisy coworkers), speak out loud to myself when I am alone (I also do it to just think about anything, it’s much easier for me to sort my ideas and take decisions). Another thing I do when I feel sad is playing rhythm games, because it forces me to focus about what I am doing while listening to musics I enjoy (but I do not do it a lot now that I have a dog, I feel much better thanks to her <3).

I started with kbin but left it for lemmy + mastodon. It was not mature enough to handle so many users (which was unexpected by its own creator). Too many issues with bots, the instance itself, and the lack of mobile apps motivated me to move on. It’s sad because it’s creator seemed pretty invested into its project (and I loved the UI, and the ability to get both a Reddit-like and a Twitter-like experience).

I sometimes use AI as a proofreader. Asking if the text is well structured and how I can improve it. I prefer to rework it by myself, but it’s nice to be able to get a feedback on a report you are writing before sending it.

But my main use is to ask « common sense » things or fill my lack of basic knowledge. For example, I was struggling for buying some honey at a store because they were 3 kinds of honey and I had no way to know which one to buy (it was a bigger a store than the one I usually go to). I had a short conversation with an AI to determine which one was the best for me. It calmed me down and helped me to make the right choice (this is the kind of situation that makes me very anxious).

It’s also very good to learn or understand foreign language expressions. English is not my native language, so it’s nice to be able to ask an AI about a joke characters are telling in a RPG when the game has not been translated.

I think the next step for me will be to give an AI the ebook I am reading, and ask it questions about things I forgot or did not understand correctly while reading it (I don’t want a summary of the whole book because I don’t want to be spoiled).

I think it’s a very useful tool, and I believe it could make a big difference for autistic people as well in some cases.

I tend not to trust myself on subjects I am not an expert. It feels strange to me to give more credit to a few hours of research / reading books than a professional who likely studied the subject in much more details, and also encountered other autistic people.

Besides, we have so many biais about that. Finding an answer to your « uniqueness » is so convenient, that you will likely reject anything that does not fit the story, and put emphasis on things that fit the story. Even if you were an expert, you shouldn’t be the one to evaluate your own case.

I don’t say professionals are perfect and make no mistake, but trusting yourself on subjects as complex as this one will likely lead to the wrong conclusions.

Anyway, my message was not really about that. You are free to consider yourself as autistic if it helps you. I personally won’t do it for myself because I do not consider myself to be competent on the subject, and I don’t think it’s that important for me (I understand that it can be very important for others).

I prefer to focus on my issues and the solutions I can find, and if those solutions are coming from autistic people, it just makes it easier for me to find resources about it.

I won’t repeat what others said, but another point is that some people are desperate at feeling “special” (or serve a narrative where you are not responsible for your failures). By accepting an incorrect self-diagnosis, you can start to mimic autistic traits (even unconsciously) to fit better the label you desperately want to wear.

I have to admit I was too happy and relieved when I started to suspect I was also autistic. It was somehow validating my whole life, and providing me a convenient explanation for all my failures and why I am alone nowadays. But after a while, I realized it was not as simple, and I could just be desperate at finding an external cause to this, rather than objectively trying to determine whether I truly am autistic.

In the end, I realized being autistic or not is not what should matter to me. It shouldn’t change who I am. Instead, it is giving me a direction to follow to improve myself, which is a great improvement compared to before. I can be wrong on my self-diagnosis, but the direction I follow is a good step forward whether I am autistic or not.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to be convinced of something that is not supported by a professional expertise. What if you are wrong?

However, there is no harm to find similarities with autistic people, and use their experience to improve yourself in some situations if their tricks to handle them also work for yourself.

I personally suspect I am autistic, but I won’t be convinced until it has been approved by a professional (if I ever feel the need to know for sure). Meanwhile, I like to read experiences from others and sometimes, they provide tips that really helped me. But the best thing I learned so far is that there is no problem to be different and do things your own way most of the time if it is much easier for you to handle this way.

I do exactly the same! I do not cook very often (once a week), but I keep a google doc with all my recipes and tweaked them carefully until I was satisfied with the result. Along with the quantities, I also note stuff like the power I have to use when cooking this or that (+ the duration).