Of course

When I tell people the only social media I use is Lemmy, I always wait patiently for follow up questions immediately after, which never come, because nobody gives a shit about what obscure social media the 35 year old man uses.
- I just say "I frequent a few niche forums". No follow up questions. I'm old as well.
  
  they all think you're talking about 4chan
  
  I frequent forums, too. Mostly car and motorcycle forums. Lemmy doesn't really have those kinds of forums.
- I told one of my co-workers I used Lemmy, and he actually used Mastodan, so I'm the one who ended up asking him questions
- As a 23 year old man, i quite often get the follow up "whats lemmy" but nothing beyond that.
  
  “It’s like Reddit but less”
- Hey I am not an 35 year old man! I am still in my 20's!
  ...well, 29 actually, shit.
  
  35 is rough. I’m starting to understand the whole “mid life crisis” thing.

Not even big instances, but big platforms I would say. Like, if you're lucky someone might have heard about Mastodon, but that's pretty much it.
- “Ah yes the Dinosaur mato thing? Failed twitter alternative right?”
  (actual quote from a convo I’ve had)
  
  Failed Twitter alternative is pretty close to the truth actually.
- Even the word "Instance" is unnecessary gatekeeping jargon.
  
  What do you propose instead of "Instance" ?

I’ve never felt like a bigger idiot than when I try to explain the fediverse to normal people.
- I find it easier if the other person is a podcast listener.
  "You know how podcast ads usually say 'listen to it in Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts?' It's a bit like that."
  If not, I have to say something weak or complicated like "it's a bit like email, dunno how to explain this if you have never thought about how email works, though".
  
  That's a really good analogy.
  The email one works too once they realize they've never actually thought about what an email is. Like:
  "If I send you an email from gmail, you can open it in outlook, right?" "Yeah"
  "That's because an email is just a file that both gmail and outlook can use" "makes sense"
  "Can I see your Twitter post on Reddit?" "No of course not"
  "But i can see Lemmy (Reddit) posts on Mastodon (Twitter). And these apps aren't owned by huge companies. Normal people run each instance, and the software is free for anyone to use or host."
  
  I usually start with email, but I wonder if podcasts would be smarter. when I read what you said, my first thought was"but podcasts require you to upload to every instance that you want to be seen on" and then I realized that for the people that are just trying to get content this doesn't matter. That's actually genius.
- Hey.. so you know about Email, right?
  How you're with Gmail and I with.. say Proton. And we can still send Emails to each other? ...
  Is my go to approach
  
  That's a pretty good analogy.
  
  Except using Lemmy is nothing like sending an email.
- I always start with, ok, so you know the internet is basically a series of tubes right? Once we are on the same page about that, I start talking about ipv4 and ipv6 including a mention of dual stack supporting instances.
  
  Dude don't stop talking right when we're on supporting dual stacks. I'm on the subway and the entire car is about to get off but now we're just sad
  
  At some point do you overlay it on the OSI model?
- I don't think this is as much as specialized knowledge issue as it is that normal people are frightingly technologically illiterate considering how much is computers. I mean this is not a hard concept to grasp at laymans architectural level
  
  Technology literacy is specialized knowledge. You're portraying the comic.
  99% of people have no need or desire to know anything more about technology than the bare minimum to use it. The fact that you're on Lemmy alone means you have way more tech knowledge than the average person.
  
  Maybe I feel crazy rather than stupid then.

The original comic is actually genius, and very true.
You clearly see it when the Linux users start prostletysing.
- I want to like Linux and leave Windows, but when I say that I don't want to be forced to use CLI/terminal because I don't live in the 1970s, people get angry at me.
  
  If all you do is web browse and play games, you should be able to use Linux without the CLI just fine.
  
  been on Linux mint for a year now and the only time i use the terminal is to git push to update my website. so far, nothing else I've been doing has needed the terminal.
  
  You brought this on yourself, you realise that, right?
  
  The CLI does some things so fast though. I myself like bypassing the gui and interacting more directly. Same reason I only drive manual cars and grind my own coffee (autistic?) But yes, I am glad linux has a gui and we shouldn't force the cli on people who grew up with ipads.
  
  Silly to get angry about, because you can use Linux just fine without it. But the terminal is a powerful tool.
  
  I don't want to be one of the people you think is angry at you, but I do want to proselytize a bit.
  have you ever used a dedicated download manager? think of the terminal, first, as a dedicated download manager. All you do is type wget and then paste in the URL.
  eventually, you may want to specify where the file goes, or what it's named when you finally download it, or something else. then, you can look up which flags to add with wget -h
  I suggest you try Linux, any flavor, but especially Debian or Debian variants. instead of thinking you need to learn to use terminal, just remember that you have a dedicated download manager called terminal.
  The thing is you will eventually learn that the terminal does a lot more than called wget. and you already know how to get help, and add flags.
  
  No one is forcing you to learn it, but you do need it for getting out of trouble.
  The CLI is the fastest way of getting things done if you know what you're doing.
  
  OpenSUSE. People don't seem to give it much love, but their system settings application YaST makes command line usage completely avoidable for average users. Even for power users, YaST makes command line usage optional rather than necessary for most tasks.
  
  If you say it like that you are pretty much trying to aggravate them, though
  
  When I need to run terminal, it's because I'm following a specific guide to fix or setup something. It's not much different than following a similar guide for Windows, except there might be a bit more copy+paste going on on Linux.
  The omnipresent mentions of terminal also delayed my switch and it was completely unnecessary.
  
  Then don't use the terminal. You don't need it.
  
  With flatpak/snap you don't need to use terminal anymore.

For those on traditional social media, I just say "What if Facebook and Twitter and YouTube could all talk to each other? People on Facebook could follow people on Twitter and people on Twitter can follow people on Facebook." Then they usually reply "that would be neat" and then I tell them "yeah, that's what we are building over here in the fediverse."
It usually is easier to give them an analogy related to something they are familiar with.
- Ironically as a fediverse user I had a visceral reaction to reading that. That sounds like absolute nightmare fuel to me...
  
  True. But when talking to someone who lives on traditional social media, it is an explanation they would understand. Sometimes you have to meet people where they are, not where you want them to be.
- I actually have separate accounts on the different fediverse products - for me it’s the decentralization of instances that’s the most appealing.

To top it all off, I share this to discord groups where nobody even knows what the fediverse is.
- We're cool before cool 😎

Goddamnit! I love this and want to share it, but don't know anyone else that will appreciate it. Is this.. irony?
- It is cyclical fate
- You can share it with me if you want!

What is misskey? I am a fediverse user and I don't even know what that is.
- Microblog platform out of Japan
  https://misskey-hub.net/en/
- Best way I can describe misskey as a user of it is that it's like mastodon but if they implemented every feature request possible. I mean it literally has a toggle to convert your text into cat speak for no other reason other than the dev felt like it. It even has its own markdown language to give your text crazy effects because who wouldn't want an emoji amplified 4 times that spins and changes color?
  It uses activitypub as well so it's entirely interoperable with mastodon instances (although some functions like quote posts or the custom markdown language aren't formatted as nicely when viewed from a mastodon instance)
  
  toggle to convert your text into cat speak
  SOLD!
- I don't even know who Nicole is???
  
  One day she will come to your DMs
  
  Nicole, the fediverse chick

A yeah, Nicole hit me yesterday again. 😂😂😂
- Hmm new picture once again
  
  It is strange isn't it? That is one thing that puzzles me a lot about this scam.
- Whats the story on this? I had it in my inbox too a few days ago.
- Has anyone explored the links and survived to report back?
  
  That was something some weeks ago. One guy did an analysis from all these links and came to conclusion that maybe is her ex as revenge or something like that. But dunno really.
- I've only ever seen her in threads like this.

[off topic?] When William Gibson was researching 'Neuromancer' he spent a lot of time hanging out with hackers. They'd tell stories and he'd catch about a quarter of what they were talking about.
When it came to write the book he decided that he'd make the book like that, the reader would have to push though a lot of things that didn't make sense until they acquired more information.

Duh, she is the fediverse chick after all
- It's so annoying to me because she kinda looks like an ex with the same name
  
  Your ex was named Fediverse Chick?
  
  I'm sorry to hear that. That's a feeling alright 😞
- I know she is, but its kind of creepy.
  It's no longer as humorous as she was at first withe them whole shit j. The world and the content just makes me worry it's something else that we ~~Rob ok~~ can't control.
  Edit : ok that happened a second time this morning why the fuck am I dosing off suddenly and not realizing I didn't check before I hit save?
  
  Even after coming back to it, this looks like you were having a stroke mid-type.

what's the oregano?

Story of my life. I'm so annoyed when the response is to try to get me to shut up my flattering my intelligence. "Wow you use big words, anywayyyy". Id rather you tell me you just don't care. Then I can stop wasting my time. It took me a long time to realize what was going on, lmao.

Early in my career I learned not to overestimate anybody's familiarity with my field.
- If everyone took privacy, ethics, and computing as serious as the nerds in the fediverse the world would be an objectively better place.
  
  I'm with you on privacy and computing but LOL at the ethics. Lemmy exhibits the same "bad when THEY do it, good when WE do it" ethics as general social media and the world at large.