Feeling very computery today: listening to new Orbital, wearing a 2001: A Space Odyssey shirt, and wrasslin’ with servers. #beepBoop
Possibly the single most incomprehensible, while simultaneously hilarious, sentence I've ever read:
"As the dromosphere becomes heavy with information, people’s physical experience slows down in a bid to absorb as much as possible. When life becomes devoid of speed, gaps appear between the slowing down and fast pace of information, triggering a picnoleptic consciousness. It is within these voids and this consciousness, I would argue, where mumble rap is created."
I'm not happy with how the Wil Wheaton situation was resolved. An admin was overwhelmed with frivolous reports about him and felt forced to exile him. I've said before that I think it sets a dangerous precedent on how a large group of people can mobilize to drive anyone off the fediverse. Mob rule is universally dangerous: Mods and admins must examine evidence and decide based on wrongdoing and danger, and not on how many times someone was reported.
One of the symptoms of depression is not being able to tell the big problems from the little problems.
Wanna do some good? Form a brigade and go after Alex Jones or Mike Cernovich or Richard Spencer. Punch a nazi. They're not hard to find.
Wilw didn't deserve this. No matter how you feel about him, this was unfair. And we should learn from it because it will happen again.
We have to be able to tell the big problems from the little problems.
What’s happening to @wilw is shameful and a classic example of using tools that are supposed to be for protecting users to persecute one instead. A strong community leader would shut this shit down. The guy has only contributed positively to Mastodon. If the Masto community continues to eat itself in this way, it will only become a smaller, shittier, angrier Twitter.
@tsturm @fraying Are celebrities not people too? Are they destined always to be treated differently because of _how others treat them_? That's just wrong, imo. If Mastodon can't work for a person who wants to just be a part of a community, but who happens to be famous, then it doesn't work for anyone.
@wilw I’m so sorry. Please find an instance with a better admin. Mastodon is better with you in it.
The Mastocourse, nazi mention
@Caelyn ... to send abuse to celebrity dickheads without consequence. If that's what you want in a masto instance, by all means go for it, but I don't think it's going to turn out how you think it will.
Creating exceptions for very subjective categories of acceptable targets is what allows toxic callout culture to thrive. It's how far right assholes get Trump-criticising directors fired over ten year old shitty jokes they already apologised for and demonstrably...
The Mastocourse
So, the whole thing about the fediverse, right, is that instance admins can choose how to run their instances and if you don't like how things are being run on your instance, you can move!
Now, I want an instance where dickheads are not welcome. I also want an instance where, if some rando calls me a little bitch, my admin will deal with it. These are not contradictory desires.
What I'm seeing is lots of people who want a safe, well-moderated space, but also want to be able...
Because it apparently needs to be repeated: DO NOT harass people you don't like. Not even if you think they deserve it. Not even if for some reason you think they're not really people because they're famous.
If someone's breaking the rules, report them and your admins will handle it.
If they're not, leave them alone.
Either way, DON'T HARASS THEM.
If you're not following #tmbg or this year's crop of #dialasong tracks then... are you really a technologist? The jury is now out
My brain hurts... Host Programmer at Westworld. UX, Design, Code, Coffee, Music, Photos (https://travstone.smugmug.com/). #BlackLivesMatter