Every time I see a joke about this, I think about how people spamming it pushed Will Wheaton off of the Fediverse.
:(
I didn’t know he attempted the fediverse
Editing: straight from the horse’s mouth: https://wilwheaton.net/2018/08/the-world-is-a-terrible-place-right-now-and-thats-largely-because-it-is-what-we-make-it/
Whoa, he was on Mastadon in 2018! A very early adopter.
Now I’m sad
Mastodon has a rep, and a select few seem to have quite the investment into keeping it that way. They ran off every friend I’ve tried to point there. It’s simply not worth their time to put up with the bullshit. I can’t blame them. I don’t use it myself (never got into Twitter or microblogging), but I dipped my toes in with kbin since it was a feature. The only person I followed was Alec from Technology Connections, but that didn’t last long because people crawled up his ass and set up shop until he left.
I’m not sure if it’s sweaty basement types trying to keep their corner of the internet “pure” or bad actors trying to poison the space to keep it from blossoming. But it’s obnoxious.
I’m struck by how similar our experience to mastodon was, right down to Technology connections being the only person I followed.
Who says he isn’t on the fediverse?
Chances are he’s probably here, just not under his own name or identity.
He quit social media entirely. It was a whole thing. I linked his blog post below.
I know lots of people that claim they aren’t on social media. Unless we can monitor their daily activities, it’s really hard to know if a particular person has an online identity or not. Unless you are meta, google or the NSA, it’s difficult to know what anyone does online.
Personally I always liked Wheaton because I basically grew up watching him. And it was neat that we are of similar age. The first time I saw him was in the film ‘Stand By Me’, which was an amazing movie to see as a kid growing up in a messed up world. Then to see him appear in TNG soon after which was a TV series I really enjoyed as well, I was always a fan of his.
If he’s anything like the people in our generation … I have a strong feeling he’s wandering around here and having his own fun.
I love the thought that one of the regular users of this forum is stealth Wil Wheaton!
I just got a twinge of excitement at that thought … who knows … I could be Wil Wheaton! … or YOU could be Wil Wheaton!
lol … I’ll be suspecting so many people from now on.
I would just like to state, for the public record, that I am absolutely not Wil Wheaton.
no, I am not
SpartacusWil WheatonSounds like something Jeffrey Combs would say … hmmmmm
It’s totally @[email protected]
c/tenforward is never going to be same again
I tried to look it up and that’s reportedly not it. According to https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/9bimug/why_did_mastodon_run_off_wil_wheaton/ he pissed off both the Alt-Right (Gamergate) crowd as well as the Left (specifically trans) and in general got many people mad at him irl. I’m no expert, just thought that I’d share the link in case anyone else wants it too.
Editing to add: yeah it looks like that stuff was the catalyst. Him mentioning it was something that I remembered for some reason.
This is from Will’s site:
I found a harsh reality that I’m still trying to process: thousands of people who don’t know me, who have never interacted with me, who internalized a series of lies about me, who were never willing to give me a chance. I was harassed from the minute I made my account, and though I expected the “shut up wesley”s and “go fuck yourself”s to taper off after a day or so, it never did. And even though I never broke any rules on the server I joined (Mastodon is individual “instances” which is like a server, which connects to the “federated timeline”, which is what all the other servers are), one of its admins told me they were suspending my account, because they got 60 (!) reports overnight about my account, and they didn’t want to deal with the drama.
People on the internet can be so cruel. Possibly it’s the anonymity, or maybe they’d do it even despite that.
It’s like Mike Tyson said…social media made y’all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.
… that you know of at least:-)
And btw since I am finished here, may I also point out that…
!!
Once upon a time people settled their differences like men: punching. Biting. Raping.
