Absolutely ABYSMAL branding and accessibility.

Social media relies, no matter how much we hate it and wish it weren't the case, on things being "new", "hot", and "FAST" while this service's name implies the absolute ANTITHESIS of what people need to disseminate information in real time: mastodons are frozen, dead, ancient, clumsy, and/or fossilized. And worse, that's how it feels to use, too.

An extinct lumbering beast from the ice age.

Also its name is a clumsy dactyllic meter full of dull woody phonemes that doesn't feel good to say. Its name lands with a dull wet thud. Mastodon's name is so forgettable that nobody i ever tried to tell about it can even REMEMBER it, and even my best friend for some reason imprinted its name as "WalrusChat" (which is SO much worse but silly with that it stuck) and she can't remember it any other way to this very day.

Gods, the mileage it could have done with just, JUST a better name. Two syllables with accent on the first just like Facebook Lemmy Twitter YouTube Snapchat Discord Ebay PayPal Google Apple Samsung TikTok WhatsApp Signal and LinkedIn. Even Pinterest and Instagram, in conversation I constantly hear people pronouncing them as pint-rest and truncating to In-sta.

If it were made of bright, sharp, tinny phonemes that POP on the two syllable meter it'd have been extra good. I would have liked Trunky. It's bouncy and playful and fun and it keeps the pachyderm symbolism so posts could still be called toots.

The problems extend to the interface experience too: Instead of liking and bookmarking there's only FAVORITING and that adds FRICTION because just because you like something doesn't mean it's your FAVORITE. Favorite implies permanence in an otherwise transient medium and people mistake it for BOOKMARKING which needs to be its own separate functionality. Instead people see posts they appreciate, go to like it, but then STOP and ask themselves "wait, I like this but is it really my 'FAVORITE'??? No, that's a bit too much..." And their minds have already moved on!

THIS IS WHY THERE IS SO MUCH LESS ENGAGEMENT EVEN ON MASSIVE INSTANCES WHERE THE CONTENT IS A FIRE HOSE

AND GUESS WHAT: LACK OF ENGAGEMENT IN A CONTENT DISSEMINATION SOCIAL MEDIA APP IS,
UH,
*CHECKS NOTES*
BAD, ACTUALLY!

They COULD have lent into the branding! For bookmarking, call it "remember" (because elephants never forget!) and their "like" analog could have been "trumpet" (like trumpeting praise) whereas "boost" should have JUST been called ReToot. But instead nothing feels right and it's clunky as SHIT.

And if all that isn't already BAD ENOUGH, Having created several profiles on several instances myself, the sheer disparity of content from instance to instance is VAST. You can't just go on mastodon and see the same things everyone else sees! AND THAT'S A BIG FUCKING PROBLEM! You can't just BE "on mastodon", you gotta also know WHERE ON MASTODON something is and follow it. AND MAYBE YOU FOLLOWED THE WRONG ONE ON THE WRONG INSTANCE FROM THE WRONG INSTANCE.

so much

FUCKING

BULLSHIT.

AND ITS NAME WASN'T EVEN ORIGINAL! SEARCH RESULTS COLLIDED WITH A METAL BAND OF THE SAME NAME FOR YYYYEEEEAAAARRRRSSSS!

that's why.