My boosting behavior mostly reflects my desire to have a tidy timeline.
I like a tidy timeline devoid of tons of stuff that I won’t want to read. I also think that I cannot hold others to a high standard of discrimination in boosting, if I don’t hold myself to that very same standard. It won’t do for me to avoid boosting posts for some specific faults, if I don’t avoid those very same faults myself.
These are the guidelines that I follow about boosting or not boosting something. These guidelines make sense to me. I do not care if they make sense to you or not. I also reserve the right to make rare exceptions when I see it fit, but I have to warn you that I don’t need to be consistent with my exceptions, and that a post has to hit a specific note for me to ignore my rules.
Also, I’ll note here that your popularity elsewhere, or even in the fediverse, does not matter. I regularly don’t boost posts by celebrities who do not use hashtags.
Ultimately, you don’t get to decide how I apply my rules.
Understood?
I try to be a considerate booster. If you know me at all, you know that I don’t like people who have nothing to say but boost all the things. Ironically, I eventually catch on to their shenanigans and end up muting them, so I don’t see all the things that they boost, and they want me to see so badly. If I follow you, it is because I’d like to hear about you. Conversely, I’m selective in my boosting, for the reasons given above.
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By far, the most common case in which I see a post that I would like to boost, but don’t, is when it has no hashtags. This is not merely my own itch that I’m trying to scratch here. Some people do not want to see certain types of contents. Proper tagging helps them know what your content is about, and helps them filter out this content if they don’t want to see it.
For these people, this filtering is self-care. When you post a post without tags, then they cannot care for themselves.
I also don’t boost posts that are merely “boost this post if you [something banal.]” Things like “please boost if you like cats,” “please boost if you are above 50,” etc. Note that I do not include in this group well written posts that ask to boost for awareness. Boosting for awareness is generally worthwhile, whereas boosting for the platitudes I put above ain’t.
Furthermore, I no longer boost posts that are from objectionable sources. Fox News is the prime example here. If it is newsworthy, there is certainly another source you could have picked. If Fox News is the only source, it is most likely a lie. In fact, I don’t even see these posts anymore because I filter them out.
Finally, I don’t boost posts that are just a link. Oh, maybe the link itself gives an idea of what the page I’m going to find at the other end is all about. Maybe I even follow that link and think what a great article! I won’t boost. I hate naked links in posts. Tell us why you agreed or disagreed with the article you link to.
I probably have more rules, but they are not coming up to mind right this moment, and are likely not as important as the rules above.
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