Noëlle the 8-Bit🏳️🌈🎄
Mastodon tip: You can reply to your own toots. This won't put your username in the toot, but it /will/ mark your reply as part of a conversation.
Among other things, this makes it easier for others to follow what you're saying, if you're posting multiple toots in succession; all they have to do is click one toot and it'll expand the whole conversation thread.
Also, you can reply to a post and remove the usernames from it. This keeps the post threaded in the conversation but makes it NOT a reply to the OP, which means it won't show up in their mentions but WILL show up in your timeline for people who don't follow the OP.
This is useful for when you've boosted something and want to comment on it; your comment will appear to all of your followers even if they don't follow the OP.
Bonus: you can re-add the OP's username at the end to mention them!
@noelle So toots don't appear in your timeline if they begin with an @ sign, regardless of whether it's a reply?
@noelle It seems that Replies starting with @-myname still show up in my timeline, so do Replies starting with @-not-the-person-i-reply-to 🤔
Birdsite's rules where simpler (don't show tweets starting with @, which lead to the .@ weirdness)
@remram44 Reply status is weird (and apparently weirder than I thought). Just having an @ in a toot doesn't make it A Reply, but (apparently) replying to a toot, even if you strip the @ out, makes it A Reply, so it won't show up on other people's Home timelines unless they're following the person you're replying to.
So you could start a new toot and @ me, and it wouldn't be a Reply to me - but you could reply to this and strip my @ out, and it /would/ be a reply even without my @.