Sometimes I struggle to convey what continues to fascinate me about dezentraly organized social media - its like explaining to someone who never played Go why its awesome who never played it.
And what I would usually recommend is (in the case of Go): watch hikaru no go (popular Go anime). I could teach them the rules, but to capture the spirit of it, I would also need to spend hours playing it with them. So instead, I give them an awesome series, which conveys the drama, fights, frustrations through story.
Would that also work for the fediverse? Sometimes I tend to get lost in technical details and how it tries to solve problems about moderation without conveing any of the daily drama and excitement I have - so what would be a good series/film/anime/book/comic that could convey this? Or do we need to create it?
I usually explain it simply:
“Do you use email?” “Yeh” “It works similar doesn’t matter which provider you choose Proton, G-mail, Yahoo and your mail can go to all of the others.”
I tell people it’s like signing up for a newsletter with your email, except the newsletter is also your social media feed.
Right and that explains it well. But it doesn’t exactly get people excited or make them understand what it FEELS like to be part of a federated social network.
If there’s too much excitement and drama, something has gone wrong.
I tended to just send people links to communities they might like them follow up with an explanation of what Lemmy is, if asked. Bit boring I know.