Fedigrow

Note from Blaze: this post has been sent to me by another poster. Their post starts after this line.

I was gonna post this on Fedigrow myself. But then I realized that it would be a very bad look. It’d seem like the person who starts a huge drama about threatening to leave when they’re some small fry, “don’t let the door hit you on your way out.” That is absolutely not what I’m trying to do! I want to help the Fediverse grow, but I also feel it’s increasingly becoming a place I might not want to be in anymore, and I can’t be the only person feeling this way, although it also likely has to do with my own particular psychological vulnerabilities. So I figured I’d share my issues in the hopes maybe it starts a discussion on if you find it worth changing in order to help grow the Fediverse, and if so, how. (Or not, maybe I just don’t fit in here!) And have Blaze post it instead of actually me, to avoid the entire “I’m leaving! (Unless you beg hard enough for me to stay)” *flounces off in a huff* thing. Can’t flounce off if you don’t know who I am.

I participate and post on the Threadiverse because I want to help open-source Reddit alternatives, open-source social media. But they can never fucking stop talking about real world horrors, party pooping in threads that are not meant for political or real-world discussion constantly. Do I agree with most of the points? Yes. But I’m trying to talk or read about something else. It’s gotten to the point I don’t want to check notifications anymore, in case my post with a joke about cats results in a top-level comment about the environmental problems outdoor cats can cause (and then I get pissed because why is everything always being circled back to some real-world struggle or injustice, can’t this place just put the pitchforks down and have fun for once. Then I also feel bad I got pissed because it is probably an overlooked situation people don’t think about that deserves to be heard and my anger is because I’m trying to shut others up to make myself comfortable. Then I feel angry again, because minorities affected by real-world happenings want rest and comfort from the constant reminders of bad real-world happenings too, it shouldn’t automatically make you a privileged-people-head-in-the-sand bad guy. Please don’t eat me alive if actually outdoor cats don’t cause problems, I am not a cat owner and have no stake in that argument, it’s just an example). Even in communities that have rules against politics or depressing or outraging content, this type of comment will be posted.

Sometimes it just pisses me off, sometimes I enter a huge doom spiral after seeing the real world horror post and do nothing tangible to help anybody. I only ever manage to actually put my small drop in the bucket to fight against these people when I’m not on an outrage scroll doom session. (And I do wonder just how much we are encouraged to vent online so we don’t take our anger to protest or call representatives or spend time trying to figure out how to gum up the works of the orphan crushing machine. For what it’s worth I’m putting this vent out there because I think it might be useful for people to get a gauge on possible discontent with the Fediverse—I want us to have a big audience! If it were Vent #3382 about the same damn thing and this was posted in the community every day I’d probably think twice about trying to have it posted.) And I never used to be this sensitive and easily-triggered into a doom spiral, but I think I also never saw politics posted quite this often, quite this eagerly, quite this angrily. (And the political situation was never so bad for me and personally threatening to basically all my minority demographics to the point where I would want to escape from it online because it was omnipresent everywhere else.) I tried to escape the hellscape of modern social media like Reddit and Facebook and their political shenanigans and constant outrage and enshittification, by going to the Fediverse, only to continue being given the outrage. Just not so algorithmically pushed at you because that is the goal, but pushed at you because that’s what the people here organically say and upvote. I mean hey, no intentional tracking or monetization of outrage, no enshittification, but I sort of feel like it was out of the frying pan into the fire. It’s gotten to the point where I post and walk away, not wanting to check comments (or even my own notifications) in case someone else has some snarky one-liner about the immigration horrors in the United States of America… because someone posted about American cheese in a food community. I wonder if I’m the only one who feels the Fediverse is just… so much politics all the time that I don’t want to engage. If new folks checking us out feel the same way.

And yes, I have aggressively curated my feed and still see this. I only check Subscribed, and decidedly did not subscribe to Politics or Technology. And then, once I saw how many outrage or doom posts got on there, I also unsubscribed from Gaming and big meme communities. And I still see this stuff all the time. I wonder how it is for those who want to use Local or All. Yes, I do report these posts in communities where it’s against the rules. And it’s not like these comments are downvoted, either. They’re upvoted. Maybe I just don’t belong here, if my tolerance for discourse is too low even if my political views fit in well.

But yeah, not wanting to check my notifs because 1/10 of the time it’s some real world horror comment in a community not for that ain’t it. Not wanting to check comments on any post because they’ll usually have a real world horror comment ain’t it. The ratio wasn’t nearly this bad back when I was on Reddit. And I don’t think my current approach of posting and then never tending it is what we want, but hey, at least I’m currently part of the 1% that posts. I might stop so I can stop getting triggered into doomscrolling and spend more time fighting back against the things that make me want to doomscroll.

I leave this screenshot of a tumblr post on Reddit, transcribed for those of you who do not want to go to Reddit:

myfandomrealitea

I am actually begging some people to just let some spaces exist untouched by real-world issues and horrors.

Like I’ve lost count of the amount of times peaceful game or fandom servers have been ruined by people stampeding in with political rants, bitching about world issues, demanding internal activism, demanding vent channels so they can whine about their shitty parents, ect.

Like. Respectfully. Not every single space has to be inclusive of and welcoming of outside topics. The real world sucks. We don’t needed to be reminded of that absolutely everywhere.

4whomittolz

I get what you’re saying, but 90% of the time when I hear someone say this, the subtext is “women, queer people and black people existing in this space is political.”

I do agree with you on that, the world sucks and I just wanna get away from the stream of constant bad news, but you need to be aware of dogwhistles, and make sure you aren’t spreading harmful rhetoric.

myfandomrealitea

Ahem. Read the tens of thousands of replies and reblogs already discussing and addressing this. I am a double minority.

“Please don’t discuss Trump’s latest policies or send photographs of war injuries to this Witcher ship server” is not even close to “women aren’t allowed to be in this server because they’re women and we hate them.”

Thank you and good day.