STAY WEIRD FEDI: IN DEFENSE OF THE ECCENTRIC, ECLECTIC, AND ERRATIC
by vanta rainbow black
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"queer people joined, and furries. it comes in waves." --Gargron, 2018
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a person's attitude towards furries is a great litmus test for their level of tolerance generally, and the presence of furries and queer people and other outcasts in a space is a major sign of a healthy social ecosystem. maybe the biggest one even. with statistics showing the vast majority of furries are queer in some capacity, it makes sense that 2000's era meme furry hate was nothing more than thinly-veiled bigotry
the fediverse is an interesting place. what happens when you accidentally sextuple-overbook the same convention center with a queer pride event and furry convention and punk show and kink festival and antifa assembly and hacker conference? you get early mastodon, essentially. the november 2022 twitter waves and meta threads' activitypub integration have diluted this vibe considerably, but the fighting spirit of the fediverse is still there. and as corpo gentrifiers (meta, etc.) continue to attempt to chip away at what makes the fediverse so wonderful, here's why it's worth saving:
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1. because it's beautiful
the fediverse is the only major social media platform where trans people can freely express themselves and be visible without fear of experiencing unmoderated hate-speech. provided your instance has adequate moderation, of course. but this is the case more often than not. sure, the occassional new bigot pleroma instance pops up once in a while. but at least you can trust that something will actually be fucking done about it when you submit a report. nazis get banned and defederated. it's such a low godddamn bar to clear... and yet, by and large, the fediverse is the only major social media platform that actually manages to do this (the decent sections of it, at least). why? well, here's the big secret: BECAUSE WE DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT PROFIT!!! big companies allow nazis to fester on their services because it makes them money, and here we're not beholden to such a corrupting influence. that's kinda the entire point
all the good servers have all the bad ones blocked. that's the beauty of the fediverse. they're essentially isolated from the good portion of the network. in a book i got interviewed for (Move Slowly and Build Bridges: Mastodon, the Fediverse, and the Struggle for Democratic Social Media by Robert W. Gehl) this is termed the "covenantal fediverse" due to said instances broadly following the mastodon server covenant, the most important point of which is "active moderation against racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia." the rest is just technical stuff. still important, but nowhere near as influental
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2. because it's subversive
c'mon. being "normal" is boring as fuck. "is anything as strange as a normal person? is anyone as cruel as a normal person?" pushing back against the mainstream is awesome and epic and cool as fuck. not just for the sake of it of course, but because the mainstream SUCKS. compulsive heterosexuality, patriarchy, transphobia, ableism, competition instead of cooperation, sanitized advertiser-friendly language ("unalived" etc.), silence in the face of injustice, compromise, conformity, boring watered-down top 100 pop hits playing on the radio and barbeques with a biological family who harshly judges and really just outright hates you
DON'T WE FUCKING DESERVE BETTER?!?!?!?!?!?!
i think we do. let's be less like uptight milquetoast suburbanites and more like the neighbors down the street who they despise -- the punk house with a front yard full of empty beer bottles and crumpled up anarchism zines that's constantly getting noise complaints. in other words: let's have fun, and be awesome, and fuck the corpo stiffs trying to stand in our way!
you can't even say swear words on tiktok. and other corpo social media platforms don't fare much better. that's no way to live. FUCK!!!!!
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3. because it's important
as fascism ever-encroaches digital spaces free from corporate tyranny will only become more important. as trans people are being actively genocided here in the U.S. and abroad, alternative social media systems are a place where we can truly express ourselves. find ourselves. become ourselves. corporations are rolling back DEI initiatives and rules against queerphobia. these corpo platforms are no place to thrive. when i joined mastodon in 2017, it was at a crucial time in my gender journey. fedi singlehandedly saved me from being some doofy techbro and turned me into the amazing cyberpunk catgirl i am today. it gave me the critical positive trans representation i so desperately needed, and gave me a likeminded community. a space to learn and grow, and try on new aspects of identity to see what fit. i credit it almost entirely with shaping me into Vanta Rainbow Black
it's a common thread on the fediverse. always has been. even today. so much so that i came up with a name for it, way back in 2017: The Fediverse Effect. people tend to join and realize they're trans due to the sheer abundance of trans people on the network. it really helps to have positive representation y'know? like actual tangible people to dispel common myths and misconceptions, who you can even talk to personally about this stuff. it was indispensible in my journey towards finding myself and molding myself into the person i was meant to be
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in closing... fuck meta. fuck automattic. fuck flipboard. and fuck all the other corporate gentrifiers in the future who might try to encroach upon our beautiful weird digital haven in the name of turning a profit. you have nothing but my contempt
we should stay weird. unsanitized. unmarketable. for to do otherwise would be to forfeit the very soul of what makes the fediverse so special
stay weird fedi