Asklemmy

Don't feel the need to "fit in with the crowd". Individuality is more fun anyways.

Don't worry, everyone is still new to Lemmy! It's a community in its infancy, still growing and learning how to interact. You're getting in at what is essentially the beginning, and over time people will develop the unspoken rules and etiquette that other sites have developed over years. It's an exciting time!

I think the best starting point is asking "what do I want yo do with technology."

It is a vast subject and no one knows all of it.

If all you want to do is read the news and comment on cat pictures, that's fine.

If you want to learn how to make your own music, or write your own website, or edit photos of your cats - then that is where you should start.

What do you think would be a good, small starter project for you?

people with thick glasses

you are not totally wrong

and think they are geniuses

FTFY :-P

That said, play and don't be afraid to break things. Try stuff. Use an old laptop or PC and install some distro. Then another. There's a plethora of options on multiple levels and it's hard to find what suits best for you.

Read How to ask questions the smart way completely. (Not only useful for tech but for any kind of expertise).

Finding a community is easy in the opensource world. It's mentioned in the documentation most of the time. And there's tons of websites, forums, mailinglists, meatspace usergroups etc.

Google for error messages. Chances are pretty good, someone solved your problem before you encountered it.

Be patient. Be polite. Be persistive. There's always a solution and most of the times, you can do it.

Don't like something or miss something? Ask... People will tell you why things are the way they are or might even add/change it for you.

Learn to program: Great, now you can modify software to fit your needs for yourself. And if you merge your work, others will profit, too.

Most importantly: Have a lot of fun!

Take on a new project. With that comes more learning than you’ll ever get from reading a few articles. Set up a NAS, build a router, run Ethernet cables through your house, dual boot Linux, or something. It’s fun, you’ll learn a lot, and you will become more useful as a person. Just remember, though, when your aunt says her printer is broken, tell her you know nothing about computers!

Perhaps you can read about Mastodon and how it works. It's also federated, but much more popular, so it might be easier to find information about it.

You def don’t need to be super tech savvy here. Just learn as things come! That’s how I learned and now I’m a big computer boi with Linuxes under each armpit.

You can probably just google or ask and eventually you'll remember (if you want to go a step ahead turn it all into flashcards on something like anki i guess)

Hey! My glasses are pretty thin, and they only weigh 25 grammes. I just checked!

In all seriousness, I think the best thing you can do is just read and watch whatever is interesting to you. There isn't one place to become "tech savvy", and that in itself is an extremely broad subject. Do you want to know more about web design, machine learning, networking, data centres, etc.? Once you've got that sorted, start by just Searxing (privacy respecting the search engine) and Invidiousing (privacy respecting the YouTube front-end) what you want to know.

Since everyone learns differently and has different preferences, it's really hard to say. Most of what I've learned personally has come from running into problems in my everyday life and trying to fix them. For example, I got fed up with Netflix, so I started out with a small Plex server. After lots of reading, I started hosting my own Jellyfin server, which led me to learn about networking, storage servers, etc. As I previously stated, follow your interests, and you may end up learning about all that "tech-savvy" stuff along the way, which would be great. But there's no point in doing something if you don't find it interesting.

With all that out of the way, if you end up reading all this and kind of have an idea of what direction you'd like to go, please reply below so that either myself or someone else from the community can maybe help nudge you in the right direction.