I uh. So I made a mistake in leaving.

I liked being here and I overreacted.


@kev @mike @cooper @Gina @bekopharm @brandon

@nathand I wondered why you'd disappeared! Welcome back.

I take it you deleted your old account.

@wizzwizz4 Hey, yeah. I don't really have a good excuse as to *why* I did it. I guess I was being dramatic. I've floated along in different circles of people in my time away, and none was as friendly or satisfying as being on fosstodon. Sounds corny, but it's true.

@nathand I know it's a long shot, seeing as Mastodon isn't actually designed to make this possible, but there's the off-chance that Kev or Mike might be able to restore your old account from a backup with some improvised SQL-fu in production – assuming they still have an old enough backup.

Very very unlikely, but probably worth asking.

@wizzwizz4 The uh.. 'separation'.. process was pretty explicit about it being unrecoverable. I imagine the best I could hope for is unblocking @ndegruchy. I think I still have all the posts hanging out on my NAS backup.

A clean break might be the wiser option, though. A stinging reminder of making rash decisions.

@nathand Funnily enough, things you boosted from @ndegruchy still have your boost shown on the counter, even though it isn't shown on the list of boosters.

@wizzwizz4 I imagine that is one of the artifacts of account closure. You keep the impact, but the account goes.

@nathand Don't look back. The way is forward. Welcome home Nathan!

@nathand Welcome back Nathan! I remember reading your message about leaving, but I'm failing to remember what it said. What happened?

@brandon "Something something cancel culture; something something overreacting". The TL;DR version is much more accurate (2020 hindsight), but much less kind.

I thought I could replace the need for direct connection with IndieWeb. Turns out you can't "have your cake and eat it too". I tried a bunch of other solutions and hung out with other crowds, but it was all just bad posturing. Fosstodon is where I belong.

@nathand Thanks for the TL;DR but I'm still curious of your thoughts on cancel culture :P

That being said, I'm glad that you found something you're satisfied with(for the most part) in the end.

I know some sections of the fediverse can be quite problematic for various reasons, but it's better than the shit going on on twitter most of the time in my opinion :)

@brandon Okay:


My initial issues were (in part) about the various renaming schemes going on. At the time, I was a bit miffed by all the sudden changes being happening. It felt forced and a sort reactionary gesture to the climate of BLM, instead of nuanced thought. The literal hundreds of years of oppression and mistreatment weren't going to be forgiven or erased by renaming "master" to "main", for example.

@brandon The thought of the actions were likely sincere enough, but the impetus behind it felt like so much fake, corporate, "we love you too!" marketing.

My reaction to the reaction was a mistake and honestly kind of funny when set in that kind of context.

Anyway, live, learn, forgive and hopefully do as little harm as possible.

@nathand I understand where that frustration can come from and certainly there are places that the changes could have been coming from bad posturing only, but in the end I ended up settling on this process of evaluation:

1. Does this change affect me?

No? Don't worry too much
Yes? Move to step 2

2. Is the argument to keep it the same along the lines of "it's the way we've always done it"?

No? Contemplate the reasoning, make a judgement call
Yes? Accept the change, fight traditionalism

@brandon Ultimately, step 1 was all I needed. It doesn't really matter, blablabla.

A lot of the BLM stuff irked me because it caught so many white people "by surprise". Systematic and often *very public* disenfranchisement or straight up racism has been circulated around the news and other media for ages. Yet *now* is the time for action.

Yes, now *is* the time for action. Kudos. However, it feels like we're several hundred generations late.

Anyway. I'm moving on.

@nathand @brandon Systematic disenfranchisement and racism has been outlawed for decades. The only systematic racism still alive in the states is affirmative action programs. The racism and disenfranchisement circulated around the news and other media is not a representative sample of how racist society is, and actual sociological studies point to most perceived issues of racism being factually incorrect. Now is not the time for action. The time for action (reparations and bulkanization) was right when slavery was abolished. It's too late. No one you try to help is negatively impacted by the effects of slavery, and no one you will disenfranchise to help others has been given an unfair advantage because of slavery.

@nathand I just got here a few days ago but welcome back! 😊

@joshdholtz Well, if you are anything like me, then you will find a right bunch of excellent nerds to discuss all sorts of things with.

@nathand I think so! I’ve already found quite a few within the first 15 minutes of being here 😛 I picked the right instance

@nathand nice to have you back here too. Also glad that I could keep interacting with you via Webmention during that time 😁

@kev @mike @cooper @Gina @brandon

@nathand mah boi is back!! Glad to see you here again 😉

@yarmo Good to be back! I'm going to get to proofing my GPG key here, some day.

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