I feel the problem is likely unavoidable if you engage in "global public square" type social networking. The default set of features in Mastodon, esp. with large follower count, do not give you much control of "personal social networking".
I took notes on Reply Guy anti-pattern the other day, suggesting a rename to Reply Sigh. It is expectations at both ends that are off, leading to a lose-lose situation where everyone is frustrated.
Btw, the "punishment" side of Reply Guy is imho often as detrimental to healthy social networking as the unwanted reply. There's a whole subjective grey area between "obvious reply guy" who should not have posted, and "post okay" replies. There's a value judgment on whether to reply or not, and that also requires social skill.
Does me replying to this thread make me a reply guy? I don't know. It was on-topic imho, but maybe not wanted by you both.
Yes, in original fediscussion on the example other flaws in my analogy were pointed out. My description may have been a bit over the top (apart from that analogies almost always fall short).
It just struck me that there are broader dynamics than the reply guy being at fault, and how they lead to this lose-lose situation.
What is interesting in making analogies to offline situations is realizing how different the situation is online based on these imperfect tools we wield.
Just take the follower/following relationship. It is so poor.
I think many reply guy occurrences aren't coming from a boost, but seeing a "friend" (a follower) reply on particular topic. Then opening that discussion thread, and seeing that the slightly tangential reply is best attached to a different branch.. where it is perceived as the anti-pattern, esp. if I use the communication style I use with my friend with whom we share a certain community unbeknownst to the recipient.
Of course there's also a lotta boost-type reply guy triggering.
But who is at fault? The person receives your post in their personal timeline. It is an invitation to muse about the subject and react. But maybe in the wrong mood, or not as intellectual as expected on this particular occasion.
There's the "celebrity bias" (I dunno the correct word).
Suppose there's someone who on one hand creates shitposts with a certain kind of humor, and OTOH engages in deep serious discussion threads.
Through boosting or following or whatever you get exposed to that person for a long time, and start to think you know them, while they don't know about you.
Then in your reply you may assume that familiarity, may adopt the shitposting style. Yet it is received as inappropriate.
I will stop now, but these dynamics endlessly fascinate me.
The notes I took on the forum, are some beginnings of an exploration on Social experience design or #SX, starting with sort of a pattern library, but with aims to explicitly design for social interactions that are desirable in specific contexts.
(And I should add that I'm just in here as a complete noob. I'm no social scientist. But is social science finding its way into social networking well enough?)
While I agree, I think that the totality of the problem statement in the anti-pattern needs to be considered. Which is partly independent of the tool itself.
There are people wrongfully accused of being assholes, which may stem from wrong expectations of the social dynamics that the tool or protocol facilitates.
And while the tool is still imperfect there may be behavioral changes, habits, tool best-practices, that help mitigate frustrations that occur on all sides.
Did you know that there is a 1:1 scale replica of the world-famous #Shibuya Scramble intersection that can be rented by TV and film productions located 80 km northwest of Tokyo in the city of #Ashikaga? The real intersection is so busy that nobody can close it down for controlled filming.
This set was notably used in the hit Japanese TV series Alice in Borderland.
I'm adding new profile fields to #Smithereen, so I would like to ask the fediverse about what kinds of contact info one would expect to be able to add to their profile. So far I've seen:
Personal website/blog
Matrix
XMPP
Telegram
Signal
Phone number
Twitter
Email
I've not yet seen these in fediverse profiles but they are mainstream enough that won't hurt to add: