A quick intro to Blorbo.Social and Mastodon
Are you thinking of joining Blorbo.Social, or have just joined us? This page is for you.
The bare minimum
Here's the bare minimum you need to know before you start.
Blorbo.Social is a fandom-focused social community of people with a common interest: fandom. On Blorbo.Social, you can post anything you like (not just fandom stuff), as long as it follows our rules.
Blorbo.Social runs on a platform called Mastodon. There are thousands of Mastodon instances (sometimes called servers) with their own rules, communities and moderation practices. Mastodon instances are (usually) part of a broader network called the Fediverse (more about that another time). You can find, follow and interact with people all over the Fediverse from your Blorbo.Social account.
How to join us
If a friend already on Blorbo.Social has invited you to join us, follow the link they gave you. If not, go to our signup page.
Review our server rules. If you are happy to comply with our rules, click Accept.
Enter the requested information.
If you haven't been invited by an existing member, you'll need to tell us why you want to join Blorbo.Social. (This is mostly to stop spammers and bots from signing up.) As long as you mention something about your fandoms or your blorbos, we're pretty likely to approve your application.
You'll receive a confirmation email. Click the link in the email to confirm and activate your account.
You're in! Go forth and explore.
What to do first
How you set up and use your account is up to you. Here are some things that most people do when they first get started:
- Edit your profile. Upload an avatar and write something in your bio, so that other people get an idea of who you are and what you're most interested in.
- If you want your account to be private, you can select the Require follow requests option. This means that people can't follow you unless you allow it. Anyone will still be able to see your public and unlisted posts, but only your approved followers will see your followers-only posts.
- Check out the timelines:
- In the Home timeline, you'll see posts from people that you follow. Since you're not following anyone yet, this will probably be empty.
- In the Local timeline, you can see posts from other Blorbo.Social members.
- In the Federated timeline, you can see posts from all over the Fediverse (it's a little bit more complicated than that, but don't worry about the details for now).
- If you see a post from someone and you want to see more from that person, click on their profile and select Follow. Their posts will start appearing in your Home timeline.
- Post an introduction post of your own. Use the introduction hashtag if you like. It's also a good idea to list and hashtag some of the topics you're interested in. This helps other people interested in the same topics to find your profile.
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