NoCoolNameTom.com

I mean, I never really left, but I didn’t keep up with the whole ActivityPub thing after a brief push.

I guess this is really the second time I’ve returned to the Fediverse. When the pandemic first started I needed to get my news and turned, like everyone, to social media. I became more active on Facebook than I had been since my disaffection from Mormonism in the early 2010s, but a lot of my activity came from dismay at seeing my friends get taken in by QAnon nonsense.

I turned to the Fediverse to try and escape the insanity, but I was still too addicted to the dopamine of anger and dismay, so you can see that it didn’t last long. I tried to get my Pleroma instance set up in a complicated Facebook => Twitter => Pleroma chain so that I could post once and still feel connected to friends. I might set that back up again soon, but for now it’s been weeks since I’ve been to Facebook and months since I’ve been actively logging in.

I’m excited to see how many people are joining Mastodon. Hopefully, this will be a lasting change. I don’t think it will, however, until someone figures out how to apply an algorithmic feed to your personal ActivityPub graph.

Until then, though, it looks like we might see the fun occurring here at Mastodon increasing, which is good. Even if most people go back to the bird site it’ll be good to inject some new blood, new energy, and most importantly new technical ideas into the Fediverse.

I’m excited!