Guess I'm going to have to mute conversations on Mastodon, which is... annoying for me but the only option I have if I want my mentions to stop getting clogged with people who cannot or will not shift their understanding of how social media can work.
Perhaps in lieu of the reply-limit options that many of us wish existed in Mastodon, people could train themselves to:
- click-through and see if there are more posts by the original author that clarify their current position or desire for communication on the topic you're responding about;
- click-through to see what replies are there. Instead of simply replying with the same dozen responses that the original author likely got, you could either respond to someone else and create a functional conversation or you could decide against replying because someone's already said it;
- just stop tagging the original author because, unlike other services, the original author can be removed from a thread and it can decrease the mentions in their comments.
While I'd love some better reply-limit options, I think we could address this if we'd just add more friction to our own existence on social media instead of believing that we have to just respond to everything all the time no matter what.
We really need to rid ourselves of this reply-guy energy and start realising that conversations online are a lot like conversations offline. You wouldn't (or at least you shouldn't) just start replying to every conversation happening around you; you'd be more likely to be more thoughtful and considered of your actions.