The Fediverse is Dead to Me

Reading Time: 3 minutesYesterday I defederated my blog from the fediverse, and I removed the plugin from my blog this morning. I will probably never return to the Fediverse, whether Mastodon or other, for the forseeable future.

## The Hostile Response

The reason for this is the following. A person asked a question. I gave two links to resources that could be useful. Instead of saying thanks and ignoring it the person chose to insult me indirectly so I wasn’t as diplomatic as usual. the result is that he, and a gang mobbed me with at least ten messages over two days.

## The Persistance of the attack

In the grand scheme of things that’s nothing, but it’s one of the worst flames that I’ve experienced. It’s also yet another flame that I have experienced on Mastodon instances. Over the years I have created four, five, maybe six accounts and eventually I always got trolled and flamed. Usually I delete that account and try again. I also went from using my name to posting under a pseudonym, so that if I was flamed, my name would be safe.

## The Undermining of Self Estime

I was told “Dude get over yourself” and other bullying language. I didn’t pay enough attention to what was said by others. I blocked everyone that was hostile towards me. Social media is about having fun, and feeling pleasure. When a mob is undermining your humanity there is only one thing to do. Block and ignore. I did that, ten times. I was accused of being the instigator, the troll, the AI “Get over yourself” and more.

If I was a teen working on establishing my identity this would be soul destroying and I would seriously question my self-worth. I was bullied for helping another.

## Juvenile Behaviour

One thing that should be remembered about the web is that the accounts that attacked me are, for the most part anonymous, probably juvenile people in need of maturity to be well functioning human beings.

## Accounts Not to Follow

I broke two rules. I followed a utilitarian account for some reason which I learned years ago, is not healthy. I also answered a question to a utilitiarian account which is another faux-pas. I learned a decade ago that some accounts are toxic to follow and interact with.

## The Social Context

Twitter became toxic so I made my account private, and eventually I left because the site was no longer fun to use. In contrast, as much as I hate Facebook every single facebook group has a “no bullying rule”.Most people on Facebook use their actual name, so if anyone misbehaves their personal reputation is affected.

The latest personal attack on the Fediverse has convinced me that as much as I dislike Facebook it is probably where the most convivial community remains. I would consider BlueSky and Threads but both of those are spammer heaven, rather than for good conversations to take place. The algorithms show us content by people we are not interested in, rather than those we are interested in.

## The Anxiety

One of the consequences of regular trolling, whether on Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon or other is that it encourages decent people to leave, and for the trolls to thrive. It also makes us think two, three, four times about posting. “Will I be trolled for this post”? When you ask yourself such a question you post less, you enjoy yourself less, and you worry about trolls picking on you.

## Finding a community

It took years to find my Twitter community and it was destroyed over time by hashtags, celebrity culture and more. To re-invest time to find a community on the fediverse will take a huge amount of time and that effort could be undone by a flame war, as it has been the past six times when I deleted my instance account and moved on.

## and Finally

I have been on the social web since 1996-1997 right up to today almost every day. I have chatted, conversed, been to tweetups, seesmic meetups and meetup meetups, as well as glocals events and more. I have been part of web forums and other online communities for at least three or four decades. In that time I have rarely felt trolled or flamed. I knew people on Reddit or Quora could be hostile, so I never used them. Twitter used to be a safe place, but with time, especially during the pandemic toxic people appeared. I think those toxic people jumped ship, to the Fediverse.

In the end, between failing to find a community, and continued encounters with hostile experiences I’d rather stay away from the Fediverse.

It is more rational to find a new community in the physical world.