People often forget that at the beginning none of the current giants were "mainstream", in fact what made them attractive was the fact that they had a unique audience that formed a strong community amongst each other.

The idea of "mainstream" is dying, and will continue to do so. What we're seeing is a deep cultural fracture where communities, ideas, and people do not form the kind of stardom or centralized propagation of ideas that the previous decades were known by. As production gets cheaper, and getting an audience becomes easier, people will begin to form seamless self-sustained communities that support each other (think patreon).

If video killed the radio star, then the internet killed the star, and fractured it into infinite pieces.

I'm a daily user of Mastadon. But... People were saying this on newsgroups and gopher, then on message boards, then about Friendster and all of the social platforms that followed. If the platform becomes popular enough to reach some sort of critical mass, then that mass will drag along all of the Facebook/Twitter/Instagram stardom with it. Some people actually like their celebrities and they expect to see those celebrities on their platform of choice. And, inevitably, the marketers will follow.

Yah. Some people like their celebrities, however those celebrities are also now facing competition by other stars which have far greater community outreach, and influence.

Who do the kids of today look up to? Those are your next celebrities.

I'm afraid that's "youtubers". Both big international ones like Pewdiepie, as well as more local (national) ones.

Many of these youtubers are actually somewhat surprised about the size of their following and the fact they can actually make a living with the profits from their channel.

I'm not sure if there's any other place besides youtube where they can monetize their channel in such a successful fashion. They don't really talk about how much one earns as a youtuber, and I suppose it varies wildly. But otherwise, they're not really tied to their channel, just tell the fans where you're heading and they follow.

You read it here.

It's hard to see how this is the future without experiencing it in some way personally.

Facebook Groups connected me with fans of a particular kind of fringe art about 4 years ago and made leaving Facebook really difficult. This might seem exceedingly anecdotal, and I get that, but you have to realize that, before Facebook, it would have been impossible for any of us to even know this interest existed; much less that there were others also into it. Nothing in the cultural canon quite sufficed, although some trends in music and literature had come close, none of them quite articulated the thing. Finding the thing was a necessary part of a certain stage of my life, and gave me a psychological grounding that something mainstream might never could have. I think admitting so actually devalues the spectacle in question, but I can't deny it. There was a value in the fact that this small group of people spoke this unique language. We became something like a tribe.

Attention economics are strange and only beginning to define our lives. Younger people will depend on fringe engagements to achieve a sense of self-identity that used to be a given. Life experience is going to take a new shape accordingly.

I think early evidence of this is in music scenes, which is haphazardly often the case with forms of sociocultural influence. No conventional wisdom can explain the proliferation of indie music and things like tape labels but these things are massive forces. They just genuinely don't care what you think. They have an audience and it's up to you to be a part.

Mastadon is strangely ahead of the curve and probably doing a poor job of meeting in the middle. I think it would benefit from shoving everyone into Mastadon.social at signup and letting them learn about instances from there. Finding a home is too difficult as it is. But, eventually, it does look like the future.

That's so for me as well. I've never been able to stand Twitter. There are too many idiots, and even seemingly sane folk all too often act like idiots. But then, I can't stand Reddit, either.

Anyway, I've been tempted to try Mastodon. But I don't like the idea of joining a particular instance, and being unable to change later, without more-or-less starting over. If I or my instance got blacklisted, how would I be better off than being banned from Twitter? In either case, I could come back with an new identity, with new credentials.

The typical reply to your concern is that you have the freedom to initiate/manage your own instance. (Yes, there is also the possibility that you can join an instance and simply export your followers list, etc. But managing your own instance is far more resilient.) Now, as far as managing your own instance, admittedly, this requires skills, money, and time/attention...and if you lack any of those (or reasonably don't wish to invest time/attention), then managing your own instance isn't ideal for you - so I understand your dilemma. If, as you stated that preserving your identity (without having to re-create it often), is essential, there is no better solution to creating and managing your own instance. I do this myself; not because I care about re-creating my identity, but because i like to have control over the servers where i project myself, and also because I am admittedly a technologist and love to play with new software. It might be work - and it certainly is not free - but i do encourage you to at some point consider managing your own instance. Maybe play around a bit by first setting up a test instance with a fake/test identity for yourself, and connect with other users to test things out - for sure other users will definitely be willing to help. Then, you can determine if the investment (yes, in time ANd money) is worth hosting your own instance. Good luck!

> I don't ban for sincerely held, well argued politics.

But that's subjective, so you'll just end up reinforcing your own opinions, which is exactly what an echo chamber is, unless I'm missing something...

I tried that, but I failed to learn anything interesting in 140 (or even 280) characters.

You might. Most others won’t.