The Elephant in the Room: One Man’s Journey into the Miocene
Since Megalomaniac Musk killed off 3rd party Twitter clients, I began my journey into the other world of comparable microblogging platforms. I noticed that most of those humans I followed and respected had migrated over to Mastodon. Naturally, I gravitated towards it.
Like a raging anti-vaccer, I “did my research,” went to the Join Mastodon page, and proceeded to sign up. My first choice was to select a server. I heard about this. Decentralized. Each server is called an “instance.” No one instance is in charge. I sifted through the plethora of servers that were available. Many of them had target audiences geared towards certain topics or hobbies. I settled on one that was designated “general purpose.” I tend to ramble on about any and all matters. Whatever strikes my fancy at the moment. It was called mstdn.plus. That seemed to fit my random screed. One minute I’m talking about roasting raw coffee beans, the next I’m detailing how I reinforced my RV axle.
After setting up my account I found the majority of those I followed on Twitter and found it rather enjoyable. It was like old times. It reminded me of the early days of Twitter. My feed wasn’t overwhelming with ads or algorithmic promotions. I liked it. Mastodon had its own brand of app for the iPhone and iPad, but like Twitter’s, seemed basic at best. Scratch that. It was, in fact, better than the Twitter branded client, but didn’t seem on par with either Ice Cubes and (eventually) Ivory.
This all happened on January 22. I was loving it. Even began a monthly donation to the server. A week later I noticed I wasn’t seeing anything new from the night before. Strange. I posted something about it being quiet and all. Someone locally responded, basically saying that the server upkeep wasn’t going on as it should. The Admin hadn’t been heard from since last year. Best to start migrating over to another server. Great. Time to start searching for a new server. I’d love to be on the mastodon.social but they were no longer accepting any new users due to the influx they had from Twitter defectors.
After doing more research, I decided to host my own instance of Mastodon. Why not? I know that bitch ain’t going to go down unless I want it to. I already own my domain and servers. It just made sense. So I did. Created my user. Promoted to admin. It’s an empty warehouse when you first sign on to your own instance. Blowing tumbleweeds. Complete silence in the digital world. Until you start adding the humans you intend on following. Then it blows up from there. For now, it’s purely for my use. I made sure to turn off letting other sign up for accounts.
Now witness the firepower of of this fully armed and operational Mastodon instance.