Its not that hard!

The only time anybody says "it's not that bad" is when it's that bad.

Lmfao perfection

This has such "I use Arch btw" energy! 😂

"Works just like email" is always easy way to explain. Everyone who uses email understands that they can send a message to a @gmail.com account from a @yahoo.com account or any other server.
- Ah yeah just like email. All I had to do to comment here from a different instance was:
  "Maybe if I click login it will somehow do federated login?" Nope.
  Ok what if I copy the /post/<id> from the URL and paste it in my instance. Nope 404.
  Hmm...
  Aha! I randomly noticed this text:
  You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !fedimemes@feddit.uk
  I did that, but it eventually (takes like 10 seconds) came up with a load of random posts and comments from here.
  Maybe... if I click on Fediverse memes@feddit.uk - 792 subscribers?
  Success!
  Just like typing in someone@yahoo.com. 🙄
  
  "Maybe if I click login it will somehow do federated login?" Nope.
  Ok what if I copy the /post/<id> from the URL and paste it in my instance. Nope 404.
  Yeah, these two are major pain points. They are unintuitive, i would argue. If you click "login", it should ask you for your username. If your username is lisa@bumblebee.com, it takes you to bumblebee.com and lets you finish the login process there.
  The /post/<id> should have been fixed a while ago. I don't know why it wasn't.
  
  Well most apps take care of that for you. I'm on a different instance and all I had to do was hit the reply button. For most people setting up the account and choosing server is the hardest part. If I handed someone my phone with an account already made they wouldn't even know they are viewing and commenting on different servers hosted by different people. They would just think its a different looking reddit clone. But I don't agree that logging in if your not on your home instance is hard as it requires you to find the post again. Some apps have an option to pull up the post on a different instance but last I checked that's on an option on the web browser.
- I recently came across a scenario where the person I was talking 'felt uncomfortable' taking down my email, because it didn't end in .com. I would be careful when making assumptions about the general population.
  
  I would have been happier having never read this. [ [ P A I N ] ]
  
  I've signed up to websites that had entry validation on the email field that flagged not having .com at the end as invalid. Literally someone that should know about technology decided it would be a good idea to make it that way.
- The most success I've had is just explaining that it's a social media platform that exists across a variety of websites that all synchronize communities and posts and comments and votes, and you can interact with any of them from any other one
  The problem with the email analogy is that, for most people, email exists as the Gmail app on their phone. It does not occur to them how I can send an email from my Hotmail account to their Gmail account. The moment you say the word protocol, 80% of people's eyes glaze over
  
  That’s when I break out the sock puppets and high-pitched voices.
- Unfortunately that's not the case. there are many who don't understand what's that after the weird "a"
  
  I blame Twitter for butchering the very well defined URI specification.
- People don't actually know that nowadays.

Insert an asterisk there.
- "oh wait, you can't interact with content from servers that blocked you, or are blocked. Don't worry, this is only used to stop spam and illegal content. Except for when it isn't".
  
  Yesterday I said something along the lines of "servers don't matter" and then someone said "well if they don't matter then why is it even a question?" and I almost collapsed in on myself.
  
  don’t forget when federation just doesn’t work because the servers aren’t aware of each other!
  happens quite often on smaller servers

Works like the EU
You can travel to any country (talk to any instance) within the Union (Fediverse) unless someone leaves (defederates) like... whatever the fuck UK did (Beehaw with the whole lemmy.world and sh.itjust.works defederation drama)
(no offence to Beehaw btw 😉)
- Yes and no, in this analogy it's like every country has its own EU with whichever countries it wants, rather than a single bloc you're either in or out of.
- Fuck beehaw🤝
  
  Fuck Brexit.

Yesterday I was with a friend I hadn't seen in a while. The meme was me exactly.

I found that its easier to just show my feed and point out that my, the posters and the commenters instances are different. Kinda hard to explain otherwise.
- Yeah, my explainers now include screenshots.