I Retract My Previous Statement on the Fediverse

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So, just recently, I wrote a post about Bluesky eating up more of that crypto money, and wrote about how the Fediverse is marginally better, but only if you join an actual good server. And, I feel like that could still be true for you, depending on who you are. But, I think it’s time I take myself out of denial, and tell the real story, and why maybe you shouldn’t be on the Fediverse.

That previous post.

Since 2017, I’ve hosted a bunch of different servers on the Fediverse, from GNU Social, to Mastodon, and it was pretty fun and cool.

Fun and cool, until Laurelai Bailey, who spent around seven years manipulating and isolating me, and destroying my social circles, wrecked my mental health in the same ways being targeted, harassed, and abused from other sources, did.

Other sources, such as: Ginny McQueen, who used to run the Mastodon instance kitty.town, who booted me off of her instance and got a bunch of people to silence me after I had had a mental breakdown fueled by abuse and isolation. She’s still being an unapologetic narcissist out there on the Fedi, and I’m sure plenty people are scared of her. She was, and may even still be friends with Laurelai Bailey.

The moderators and admins behind the instances cybre.space and deadinsi.de, whom, after I had subsequent mental health issues and breakdowns, coordinated some kind of mini harassment campaign where they spoke about me as if they were stalking and watching my activity, and I was banned from both of them (at different points in time, obviously.)

Then there was hackers.town (now masto.hackers.town), run by someone who fancies themselves an imaginary representation of a television hack from the eighties, The Gibson. An admin who, after seeing that I was being harassed by a troll on his own instance, kicked and banned me for telling that troll to go fuck himself, while I was in the middle of yet another mental health crisis. Four years, down the drain.

Nobody has ever addressed this, and none of these people have ever apologized.

But, it is these mental health crises I’ve had, that have always resulted in me being booted and swept under-the-rug, that were directly caused by behavior just like everything I’ve listed here, that make it increasingly harder to make excuses for myself as to why I should continue to engage with the Fediverse.

Mind you, everything that lead up to these points was a part of the worst period in my life. I lost my job at the time because of severe harassment and discrimination. I couldn’t go outside without fear of being attacked, and someone almost abducted me one time (I bring this up frequently, because it was terrifying, and, like all of the other things that have happened since 2012, nobody’s ever been prosecuted, or forced to deal with the consequences of their actions). And, yes, there was Laurelai Bailey, manipulating me in some of my lowest points to use in her line-up of “defenders” while she gradually chipped away at any social connections I had.

I still remember when she collapsed my Discord community server by having her friends post underage anime porn in my NSFW channel.

Again, you go through even a fraction of this, you will have mental health problems.

But now, recently, there’s this new scourge on the Fediverse, and I’ve absolutely written about it before. The groups of trans men running instances, or filling moderator spots in places like Wafrn (men scurrying to collect social power, who could have guessed that even trans men would act like this), making concerted efforts to silence and keep any trans women who’re critical of their behavior, out, and voiceless.

This is an increasing problem among the younger generation of trans people entering our communities, because they have far less knowledge of all of these topics, that have already been spoken about ad-nauseam since 2014, and this works in the favor of the abusive and the predatory.

You’ll notice in one of those posts I linked from this website, there’s a screenshot from Bluesky of some weirdo who calls themselves “aucraptor,” who added me to their transmisogynist block list called “transmisandrists,” because you can’t just admit that you’re an incel.

No, you gotta be extra about it.

Just yesterday, this person, after I had spoken about the continued surge of idiots pushing the narrative that, “awkshuwally trans women can be TERFs,” made a post meant to spread more defamation about me, while simultaneously abusing the “fediblock” hashtag in a limp-dicked attempt to get me globally silenced. Because they don’t like that I’m … using my own fucking platform to say and do what I want.

So I logged onto my bot over on mastodon.social, and I responded (they had a second post in the thread where they said that they attempted to report me but only got an error when accessing my GoToSocial account from todon.nl), because you should definitely have the ability to defend yourself when someone’s bullshitting about you, especially when they’re trying to exploit and manipulate a global blocking system.

What was mastodon.social’s response to me making a mostly harmless and 100% truthful response to this?

Deletion.

With this in-mind, and all of the behavior I’ve detailed here, plus so many other things that I just don’t have the time or willingness to talk about right now, I take back what I said recently in my previous post.

I don’t think you should join the Fediverse.

I think you should run as far as you can, and just stay on Bluesky. Launch a PDS if their monetary activity bothers you.

Had I never joined the Fediverse, and never dealt with these wannabe kings and queens, digital fiefdoms of manipulative, unemotional, compassionless dickheads: I might be a slightly different person today.

As of right now, my GoToSocial instance will remain in a running state, and that could change, I don’t know. It’s on the same server as my PDS, so there’s no reason to just up and delete it, at least not yet. But I’ve scrubbed most Fediverse context from this website and I don’t think I’ll be writing about, or recommending the social network, ever again.

Follow me on Bluesky.