• tacosanonymous@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    I’ve never felt like a bigger idiot than when I try to explain the fediverse to normal people.

    • wdx@feddit.org
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      3 days ago

      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

    • Rose@slrpnk.net
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      3 days ago

      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”.

      • ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml
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        3 days ago

        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:

        “If I send you an email from gmail, you can open it in outlook, right?” “Yeah”

        “That’s because an email is just a file that both gmail and outlook can use” “makes sense”

        “Can I see your Twitter post on Reddit?” “No of course not”

        “But i can see Lemmy (Reddit) posts on Mastodon (Twitter). And these apps aren’t owned by huge companies. Normal people run each instance, and the software is free for anyone to use or host.”

      • NSRXN@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 days ago

        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.

    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      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.