this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2025
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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:
I've heard that you can view Lemmy posts on Mastodon and vice versa, but I can't wrap my head around it. I don't think I've ever seen a Mastodon post on Lemmy, or maybe I have and just didn't realize it?
What's a Lemmy post on Mastodon look like? And what's a Mastodon post on Lemmy look like?
[email protected] has a few examples
You ever notice those post replies that @ people's username or names at the beginning of the comment?. Those are from Mastodon.
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.
it's not an analogy lol. it's literally the same thing.
It gives the wrong impression though. The user experience is more like reddit, it just has the backend like email.
Except using Lemmy is nothing like sending an email.
Please don't reply all.
Consider the environment before printing this comment.
Frontend: like reddit
Backend: like email (or can just say its split into different servers controlled by different groups and they sync with each other)
Even that is way too technical for most people.
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?