Hi, I'm new here & I don't know how this works but I'm glad to be on a mammoth. Or an Octodon. Or a Mastodon. #introduction #sendhelp

@Imanoctopus Think of Mastodon as kinda like Twitter, but spread out across multiple interdependent servers, and better because most of the servers don't tolerate Nazis and other assholes.

@starbreaker ha, that's a very good point, thanks. No one wants assholes. But the 3 columns are giving me a bit of anxiety, It looks hella fun tho.

@Imanoctopus It's a little confusing at first, but give it some time. The home column is everybody you follow. Notifications is stuff directed toward you, and you can control what appears there. The local timeline is everybody on the same server as you, and the federated timeline is a firehose made of public posts from all over the network.

I'd suggest doing an #introduction post where you hashtag a few interests so people can find you, and watching local for interesting people to follow.