The beginning…
When left-leaning Twitter users got the news that Elon Musk had taken over the platform, many sought refuge in the open-source social media site, Mastodon. My god, the internet was ablaze. I remember noticing Mastodon in the App Store some years ago but didn't look into it since I'm not much into social media to start with. It is a decentralized variation of the Facebook and Twitter models that we have become accustomed to over the years and it recently became popular among those who don't agree with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk (read, "hate his guts").
A little background for those of you who have been living under the proverbial rock: Mastodon is a decentralized and open-source social media platform that allows users to create their own communities or instances (servers) within the larger Mastodon network. Each instance is managed by moderators (usually one guy, especially for the smaller instances) who determine the rules, set up the moderation policies, and decide which users can join. In each specific instance, people interact with others in the same way they would on other social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
I wasn't a Twitter refugee when Mastodon hit the big time (I've actually started a Twitter account three or four times over the years and each time left in disgust over some issue or another). Due to the ruckus created by the Twitter takeover, I decided that I had to investigate. So down the rabbit hole I went...
The middle…
That was around November 9, I believe. I toggled between two of the smaller instances before deciding on one of them. My avatar eventually donned Christmas attire and followed the Germans in my instance who were following their Advent calendars. Fun. I hadn’t really thought of Advent since I was a child living in West Germany. I eventually acquired a strike (a demerit) because someone interpreted my agreement to a joke that he made as 'trolling' (oops!). He blocked me! I’d never been blocked before…milestone passed! I discovered the Bandcamp website and the Vivaldi web browser through my explorations, set up a Bandcamp account, and decided to switch to Vivaldi's instance due to its larger number of users. All in all...a good time!
It was on December 23rd that I was propped up in bed having an early-m**orning cup of coffee and scrolling through Mastodon when an unheralded thought popped into my head: What if this Mastodon thing is just a colossal waste of my time? What am I really getting out of this? The next morning was déjà vu, propped up on my pillows enjoying a coffee when something caught my attention in the general feed postings. It was something like, "....remember what happened to Wil Wheaton". Wondering what had, in fact, happened to Wil Wheaton, whom I remembered as Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and as the narrator of a couple of books on my Audible app, off to Googleland I went.
The absolute end…
It's pretty easy to sum up the sad saga of poor Wil Wheaton, who seems to be a pretty nice guy. It's well documented by Wheaton himself. And by the Mastodon CEO, Eugen Rochko, who also seems to be a pretty nice guy. It goes like this: Wheaton joins Mastodon. he's encouraged by someone amongst the masses to use a blocklist (a consensus-formulated list of Mastodon troublemakers to block, if you know what’s good for you). The blocklist includes the names of some transsexuals, amongst many others. Wheaton promotes the blocklist in his account. Far-left-leaning Mastodoners attack. The attackers (not from Wheaton's instance) beseech the moderator of Wheaton's instance to have him drawn and quartered. Moderator, who is probably some poor 9 to 5 guy who's doing this as a hobby, complies (because, who, in possession of a real life, has time for this shit??). Wheaton's account is deleted, without his having broken a single rule of his own instance. His archived account shows the progression of events. Did I get that right, dearest Internet? By now, my coffee is cold, it is the morn of Christmas Eve, and I am no longer in the Yuletide mood.
In conclusion…
I pinned the links to the Wheaton saga onto my account for all of my 12 or so followers to see. A few hours later I deleted my Mastodon account because...why am I wasting time with this nonsense?
Fuckin’ hell.
Feb 14, 2023 - UPDATE! Apparently, the instance "Mastodon.lol" is scheduled to be shut down as of May 9, 2023 because the moderator was being trolled for not banning users for discussing their enjoyment of J.K. Rowling's new game, "Hogwarts Legacy". "Nathan", the moderator, has a rainbow flag next to his name on his profile. He even expressed his dislike for Rowling but they attacked him anyway. Wow. Just...wow. All of these people are deranged. Who wants to be associated with such crap??
www.indy100.com/science-tech/mastodon-harry-potter-hogwarts-legacy www.reddit.com/r/Mastodon/comments/10y6yb0/mastodonlol_instance_shutting_down_in_3_months