a content warning to that effect might work? I know some people who tag their jokes that way so that people don't take them seriously.

I'm also really confused why people keep latching on you so hard, I know several people who make that type of s*** post all the time and no one gets mad at them

Add a CW of "Snark" maybe?

Or personally I take the tact of "I talk about programming, and if you don't like that please block me!"

Like this?

👴🏻 You are more of Cranky Young Man, sonny. 👴🏻

> I don't know if there's a way that I can preface my spicy posts so y'all know I'm mostly speaking in jest

They should watch your channel, that gives about the right frame of reference

I looked at some of those folks and their replies to you and yeah its a them thing. You're fine I think.

I can see why they feel how they do but they're acting out and its not cool.

FWIW some of those folks are already server-muted on my instance so

There will always be people who are satire and sarcasm deficient. I try to include a "So that's what the kids are calling it these days" in my cranky old man posts.

It's kind of the equivalent of a Michael Scott, "That's what she said."

I mean, you run an entertainfo channel where you stare, baffled, into the vortex of poor choices made around technology and ask the audience to share in your confusion and distress. Or, occasionally, your appreciation for a well designed toaster. And heat pumps.

It's fine. You're fine. The thing about putting yourself out there is that there's a wide range of other weirdos with their own hangups. I have to unsubscribe from any podcast where a host decides to eat food on-mic.

there's definitely a loud minority of people here who are extremely literal, utterly humorless, and have no sense of discretion when it comes to replying to stuff that bugs them. Forgive the MCU reference but they come off like Drax blundering into a conversation yelling "NOBODY CALLS ME A THESAURUS"

FWIW I enjoy your particular style of dry subtly sarcastic humor.

Tag posts with #Curmudgeon ?

tbh I just assumed you were part British.

Somehow your dry deadpan delivery on video that signals wink wink doesn’t translate into pure text…

;)

honestly, when it comes down to the “I’m unsubscribing and telling you why”, you can kinda just go “ok” like that cartoon with the angel coming down to say ok to the person who doesn’t like something.

Sometimes people react personally to things that aren’t directed to them.

I have written a short, easy-to-remember mantra for you that I hope you may find helpful to repeat in times of stress:

"I made a series of videos on how to not quite successfully paint LED christmas lights to look like incandescent colored christmas lights and people loved them and me"

I've been thinking about this.

I suspect part of the problem is that most people know you from YouTube where "leave comments, it really helps" is kind of the driving force from other creators, so there's sort of the implication that replying to spicy takes from a YouTuber is always the appropriate action to take. That any comment is a good comment.

You aren't trying to get people to engage in that way, but you're kind of in a minority when it comes to creators,. But I also suspect you don't see a lot of the comments there in the same way you didn't see them on Twitter.

My unsolicited suggestion is to lean in and accentuate the Cranky Old Man aspect here. Some folks add stuff like that to their display name and/or bios, which I think helps.

Having been on the fediverse for a very long time, I can say for certain that posting like a Cranky Old Man doesn't automatically drive hateful replies, but posts where it's not obvious that that's what's going on do tend to get more.

Also, from experience, labeling a post as a "hot take" or a "controversial opinion" or whatever goes a long way toward helping people not assume you're an asshole because you're playing up the cranky bit.

First part of your "intro bio" will pop up the first time a person replies to you, so that might be a vector.

But all in all just keep going and let people get used to it.

This place is rediculous. I don’t get the hostility people perceive that isn’t there. I could maybe understand if there wasn’t an obvious way to listen to how you speak and get an idea of your lovable cranky persona.

I saw your original post and just smiled. And this is from somebody who has absolutely described 2700K lights as “yellow”!

I’m also a cranky-old-midwestern man with many opinions! Fight me!

(With all affection.)

Mute or block liberally.

You post cranky rant. Someone posts cranky response. If it doesn't work for you, just mute. Or maybe block if you really don't want the person interacting with you.

You can even set mutes or blocks on a timer, so if it's just "eh, this isn't agreeing with me right now but not really terrible", it will expire after a day or week or whatever and let them continue interacting with you when everyone's in a better mood.

I happen to enjoy Cranky Old Technology Connections Guy. Your crankiness never feels unearned (even if I don't always agree with you). I do sometimes wonder why you choose to respond to certain people in certain ways. But I've not dealt with hordes of commenters or trolls like you have. My social media existence has been ... well, downright pleasant.

Anyway, I appreciate your videos and I like seeing you here on Mastodon. I hope you stay around in some form.

I think the vast majority of people get it and you have to ignore those who don't.

I think your response to the person threatening to unsubscribe is perfect. 'Okay. Bye.'

Honestly, I think it's just the ambiguity of text versus the full communications bandwidth of video. Along with maybe a general intentional movement away from that kind of attitude as part of getting away from Twitter?

Like, in your videos there's enough subtlety and variance in tone for folks to understand that everyone's aware of the bit, or at least the heightening for comedy/drama.

If you were actually just angry all the time, the videos wouldn't be interesting. But I can see shifts and softening of tone and a deep, deep affection for the subject and understanding all the nuances.

But the power of the written word cuts both ways: The ambiguity means people can read what they want (positive) into a sentence. But it also means people can read want they want (negative) into a sentence. And after 15 years of how badly Twitter has descended into the porta-potties at a music festival on a Sunday afternoon, it's easy to assume the worst. Hell, it's a valid defense mechanism.

And the flip side is there are just some assholes out there who are going to tell you how you need to act. And they're assholes. They have some preconceived notion of what "the right way" is, and it's a personal affront if you don't do it "the right way". And there are plenty of those folks out there and they're all going to conflict!

Masto/Fediverse doesn't have all the tools in place yet. No argument there. Maybe the massive, centralized servers work against the goal of fostering strong, compassionate environments that can effectively protect their members through tools like server mutes and ultimately defederation. I'm no trust & safety expert, though.

I am genuinely sorry you're not having a great time. Different folks need different things, and I don't think you're necessarily wrong if you find that the fediverse doesn't currently meet your needs.

I did a daily 'zine once called _Mr. Cranky's Disruptive Newsletter_ at the Norwescon science fiction convention in Seattle, making up the same kind of character.

At Norwescon, it was such a runaway hit that we put out two extra issues AND people demanded merch. Literally. For a one-off.

At Westercon - another SF convention, one that is bid upon by cities and travels around like Worldcon but smaller, that year in Seattle - I revived the character and _holy shit did nobody, and I mean *nobody*, get it_. I had to real that shit in _so hard_ and it was _yikes_.

Basically I'm saying I feel this hard. xD

I suppose the lack of Algorithm might make it feel like a torrent of totally random replies to people with a spicy posts an a large following.

FWIW I think most of us just enjoy reading the spicy posts, we get it, and we don't feel the need to chime in.. 👍

I think part of it is that we have more concentrations of folks outside of the USA so some obvious "wink wink, this is a bit" gets lost here.

That and there are also folks for whom the "wink wink, this is a bit" doesn't come through.

I don't think it's a compatibility thing, though. I've had instances where I explained the bit and folks either understood or we mutually blocked each other.

Sometimes "it's not for you" is the best answer.

you get those people on YouTube, too.

They're just easier to ignore and move on from there

@ashten

Consider, if you will, that maybe this platform should encourage a culture where people just don't get riled up so easily.

I generally assume the best of things that I read, because I take it to heart that most people are not trying to be jerks.

Yet, a whole lot of people on this platform in particular seem to think that I am trying to personally attack them and are happy to tone police based on that.

I am going to complain about that, and I'm not going to change how I post.

If people take such offence at a post, then whatever you'd do, they would complain.

I found your post clearly understandable to be a product of your persona and in jest. It sometimes feels that people are just annoyed that Masto/the Fediverse is now something that is populated by other people that were not of the initial crowd.

The *only* suggestion I could have is to preface this with a Content Warning, but then people will police that as well...

You’re not even *close* to being a Cranky Old Man.

I’d describe you as “delightfully opinionated.” Big difference. :)

It seems that mastodon is trying to be better social media, it is still social media.

There's always going to be people who will willfully misinterpret any kind of argument in the worst possible way. and I don't think it's even about if big youtubers should be here or not, it's just someone who tries to ruin your day uses this fact as an argument that totally makes sense for them.

I guess we do need to tools to people like that.

I followed you because of this toot, which appeared on my #Explore tab.

Don't let the turkeys get you down™

Seeing your comment section it feels no worse than on the tweeters, tbh.

As others said, CWs seem to be a custom around here and it doesn't hurt to point out crankyoldmanisms and snark when you feel like you're about to light some fire under your hot takes :D

'sgenerally a fine place, here, really.

I dunno, sometimes it feels like the answer to "does anyone have a sense of humor around here" is "naw man we're all too fuckin' traumatized to handle that shit today"

More seriously I think the lack of algorithm again makes it hard to prioritize the people who get your humor

Dunno if the prioritization of "sensitive response" over "humorous response" was a design goal but it seems to be the result

I for one enjoy it. I'm not sure how a relative few perpetual malcontents making noise are worth discarding the entire population over.

Crank away, sez I. Your gripes are super interesting. You do you! If they don't like it, they can pound sand.

I'm not sure there is an accepted method for indicating #crankyoldmanrant or #hottake ...that people are going to universally accept.

I imagine blocking people and servers might be the best option around but that might be too burdensome.

Hopefully there is a way to make it work, but if not, we appreciate you trying.

Content warning: Tongue-In-Cheek Reveal/hide