Internship Check in #4

I wonder if these unpleasant feelings are in any way related to my latest tendency of lurking in social media. I don’t feel like interacting with anyone. Perhaps I have been scared from interacting because of those days of getting too many follow requests for my comfort back in planetearth.social at the beginning of the year.

It… it was a really scary experience. I am not used to getting that much attention online so when I kept getting notifications about follow requests from a bunch of people whom I had never spoken with, I was terrified because I didn’t understand what had prompted this reaction.

I don’t really consider someone particularly inexperienced with social media. I spent some time in X before deleting it in 2025 after years of disuse and joined Mastodon a few months later.

I really wasn’t expecting that kind of reaction to an intro post. I don’t know if I would call it rude but it was certainly unnerving. I made an effort to consider why would someone send a follow request on Mastodon to a relatively new user. I had my account locked for privacy reason and the large majority of the people who sent follow requests hadn’t even replied to my intro post. To me, it felt like an intrusion. Like I had moved to a new city and random strangers were knocking at my door for entry without introducing themselves first.

The first few batches of requests I gave them close consideration but as the hours passed and they kept coming, I became anxious. I estimate I got more than a hundred requests. That’s… that’s TOO much! Hundred plus requests of random strangers to see followers-only posts? What was wrong with those people?! What was wrong with social media? This wasn’t the experience that I had with Mastodon till then. I was creeper out, terrified out of my WITS!

I think what’s worse is that they just kept coming. The first twenty fours was the largest flux but after sifting through all of them I didn’t want anything to do with internet randos nor my account. Plus, the character limit was a mere 500 words. Way too little for my liking.

Those are the two largest reasons why I lasted less than a week in my second Mastodon instance. I looked deeper into scicomm.xyz and liked it’s regulations. The instance owners were very kind to accept my application despite the message that they weren’t open to new users. My bad.

I can’t help but bestow myself the innocent victim status for that atrocious experience. I despise being the center of attention and being out in a spot was nothing short of living nightmare. My anxious tendencies didn’t do any favors either. It really was an all-round bad time.

I wish my account in my new instance was a less stressful experience. I think my instance is connect to what I call “Mainstream Mastodon” where trending topics are politics, crime, and all-around negative toots. A lot of the people I decided to follow from the mountains of follow requests either reblogged or tooted emotionally charged statements. It didn’t feel like being in an alternative social media at all.

I know that X is way worse than mainstream Mastodon so I sought for a quieter place focused on microblogging. That’s how i ended up finding my current blog host and why I spend most of my time here—writing—instead of Mastodon.

I have been thinking of allowing pots on micro.blog to federate to Mastodon but knowing it chaotic quality makes me reconsider. In other words, I don’t feel safe there.

Ah yes, I actually forgot to add that I spent some time at tech.lbgt, a Misskey instance before moving to micro.blog. Still can’t get my notes to import to microblog shakes head.

Anyways, I think this is where I sign off. I feel a small weight off my chest after writing about what brought me here. I could have written this in the privacy of my journal but seeming as to how it pertained to social media, it made little sense to keep something that happened in a public space, private.

This in a check-in because my ability to write (or lack thereof) is directly related to my perception of the audience which it still that of angry and depressed mob that makes me want to run away, hide, and nothing to do with.

I genuinely love the internet, science, and writing but that negative experience has etched into my mind and affected me in ways I cannot begin to understand. If I do become a science writer and if some sort of trick of fate I find moderate success, will I be on the spotlight once again? That’s probably the future that scares me the most. But that just isn’t it? Is it? There’s a bigger fear behind it, so big I cannot see it. Or perhaps it’s fear itself that’s clouding my judgement. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.