do folks have a favorite mastodon / fediverse explainer to show non-technical folks?

[ghostcatte@mastodon.art]

do folks have a favorite mastodon / fediverse explainer to show non-technical folks?

i love to try explaining it to folks but sometimes feel like my desire for "completeness" in explanations winds up getting in the way of just giving people the basics they need

[eishiya@mastodon.art]

@ghostcatte Probably not the sort of answer you're looking for: I explain it myself, tailored to what I know of that person's experience and needs. I try to recommend not only a specific Fedi service (e.g. Mastodon, PeerTube, BookWyrm...), but also a specific *instance*, since finding an instance is often a road block for people, even when they know exactly how this all works.

[ghostcatte@mastodon.art]

@eishiya yea. i haven't kept up with what's going on with various instances for awhile so usually i can be like "well there's mastodon.art and that's great uhhhhhh there's a couple other ones i see sometimes..."

[eishiya@mastodon.art]

@ghostcatte And that's usually enough! They can always move later. As long as they have a suitable *start*, that already gives them a much better experience than registering on, say, .social would (unless their entire experience is waiting for an account approval xP)

Edit: Of course, for some people, .social would be a good recommendation!

[ghostcatte@mastodon.art]

@eishiya yea definitely would caution people away from dot social hahaha. when I explained I did try to say that picking an instance is down to just trying stuff and it's not unusual for folks to sign up on more than one. That need to "choose" something when you don't understand any of it is what really trips a lot of folks up i think

[eishiya@mastodon.art]

@ghostcatte Yep. That's why I think it's so helpful to recommend a specific one. "You can go somewhere else later if you want, but here's a nice place where you can get your bearings" sort of thing.

[diz@thegayagenda.fans]

@ghostcatte@mastodon.art I usually point folks to https://fedi.tips/ ^^

[bgsulz@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@ghostcatte I usually just say "it's a bunch of micro-Twitters that are all connected to each other. And some of them have themes." It doesn't capture the nuances, but it's a good enough mental model that when an asterisk comes up, you can build on it. e.g. "you can make your account on one micro-Twitter and move it to a different one later."