People who claim there is no engagement on Mastodon have never posted a photo of a really cute cat and it shows.

[aliide@mstdn.social]

@lemay or moss!

[electricsheep@livellosegreto.it]

@wallacewords @lemay or moss

[aliide@mstdn.social]

@yakkoj @lemay likewise, but I suspect my twitter account's visibility was screwed, for a few reasons.

[alexadeswift@lgbtqia.space]

@lemay

On Mastodon, if you want engagement just miaow

[serigala_tropis@lgbtqia.space]

@alexadeswift @lemay

[sybren@fosstodon.org]

@lemay even without a cat picture I see more engagement here than on BlueSky!

[giuseppebilotta@fediscience.org]

@lemay I'm not ashamed to confess I've been thinking about adding cat photos to posts where I talk about science because my single most successful post is a random one of a cat on a chat. I expected it to be liked because, I mean, Fediverse and cats of course it's going to make numbers, but I never expected it to get spread so much!

[aj@gts.sadauskas.id.au]

@anne_twain @yakkoj @lemay I get the impression that there's people (especially folks who have a mainstream media presence) who have basically treated Facebook, X/Twitter, and Instagram as broadcast channels.

They've taken their follower counts to heart, without considering that the number might be inflated by nearly 20 years of dead accounts, bots, scammers, spammers, and duplicates.

They've mastered the art of writing hot takes and rage bait that will get picked up by an algorithm. (This is distinct from information their followers would actually want to share of engage with.)

They don't engage with people by replying to other people's posts or responding to people who reply to their posts.

They don't share of like anyone else's posts.

Then they try the same crap here.

And it predictably falls flat.

Now personally, I've found people on Masto are *more* likely to share engaging, insightful, informative, or funny posts.

But only if they're posts of value, as opposed to algorithm-bait.

[rustybikes@mastodon.social]

@lemay @jzb #cats #CatsOfMastodon

[hellomiakoda@pdx.social]

@lemay Mastodon numbers are much smaller, but they're all people who ACTUALLY like and want to boost. Not bots. Not advertisers.

[ighostrider@mastodon.social]

@McRocker @lemay bless him, we also had a cat called Pumpkin, she was black and white and soo adorable, also miss my Pumpkin

[serigala_tropis@lgbtqia.space]

@hellomiakoda @lemay I bookmarked your post. This is beautiful.

[svavar@masto.svavar.com]

@alexadeswift @lemay

Miaow

[deliaturner@mindly.social]

@lemay seriously.

[stepheneb@ruby.social]

@lemay

And flowers too!

I love growing these deep red Dahlias!

#BloomScrolling

[pink161@norden.social]

@alexadeswift @lemay meow :3

[alexadeswift@lgbtqia.space]

@svavar

Mrrrrrpppp

@lemay

[alexadeswift@lgbtqia.space]

@pink161

Mrrrrrpppp

@lemay

[jonobie@social.coop]

@lemay Not me replying to this post simply to note that I’ve done my Mastodonian duty and Favorited every cat photo in this thread so far.

[ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org]

@MsHearthWitch @lemay Yep, they don't care about engagement or community, they want virality.