For those on traditional social media, I just say "What if Facebook and Twitter and YouTube could all talk to each other? People on Facebook could follow people on Twitter and people on Twitter can follow people on Facebook." Then they usually reply "that would be neat" and then I tell them "yeah, that's what we are building over here in the fediverse."
It usually is easier to give them an analogy related to something they are familiar with.
That was something some weeks ago. One guy did an analysis from all these links and came to conclusion that maybe is her ex as revenge or something like that. But dunno really.
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".
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."
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.
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.
Story of my life. I'm so annoyed when the response is to try to get me to shut up my flattering my intelligence. "Wow you use big words, anywayyyy". Id rather you tell me you just don't care. Then I can stop wasting my time. It took me a long time to realize what was going on, lmao.
It's no longer as humorous as she was at first withe them whole shit j. The world and the content just makes me worry it's something else that we Rob ok can't control.
Edit : ok that happened a second time this morning why the fuck am I dosing off suddenly and not realizing I didn't check before I hit save?
[off topic?] When William Gibson was researching 'Neuromancer' he spent a lot of time hanging out with hackers. They'd tell stories and he'd catch about a quarter of what they were talking about.
When it came to write the book he decided that he'd make the book like that, the reader would have to push though a lot of things that didn't make sense until they acquired more information.