Mastodon has grown into a beautiful community of 7,519,214 users across 18,458 instances. Every one of them instances is a floating boat in a worldwide ocean that’s interconnecting people in the best way.
It’s a breeding ground for great ideas, conversations, learning, information and Dogs on skateboards. The best thing, it is not controlled by one individual or company with views and opinions of how everyone should behave. Every boat has a captain, and that captain can set down the law for the people on their boat… not rules, but more guidance and a moral code, what they consider right or wrong and what they consider cool. The captain can also invite like-minded people to get on board and share a viewpoint around a common goal.
Love Dogs on skateboards? Captain Daryl is your man. Passionate about Badgers? Not as much as Captain Angie, get on her boat! Like living in a cold place… Captain Pingu, we are on the way.
All these boats can listen to, and broadcast to, every boat in this wonderful Ocean.
But What about Captain Dennis… His boat smells a bit funny and he likes to pull the wings off flys!
Well here is the genius of Mastodon. Captain Barbara’s bug boat doesn’t want to hear about that kind of messing about so her boat can just cut ties, so nobody on her boat has to put up with Dennis’s horrible behaviour. Daryl however likes Dennis’s jokes so no drama as long as his boat doesn’t start to smell even worse.
Caption Bruno’s Boat? We don’t talk about Bruno’s boat, no no no, he doesn’t broadcast to us and we don’t listen. I think that’s best for everybody.
Some of these boats only have a Captain and some are big superliners with multiple Captain’s and Catering staff, they have swimming pools, tennis courts, helicopter pads and a shit load of passengers, the biggest, Mastodon.social 929,480 Passengers.
The boat I am on Mastodonapp.uk currently has 69,738 people. Actual not all are people some are random computerised weather Station that blast out interesting information from a place I have never been but I still look at the info every time I see it – check it out: newquayweather
Our boat’s common connection is simply the little island we all live on and I think that’s kind of cool because I’m awake when they are awake.
So, Ocean, Boats, Captains, Passengers and Bruno. Beautiful, Beautiful Ocean
What do you do when the Passengers are dicks? Kick them off the Boat, simple. What if you get rats on your boat? What if your passengers start kicking off with the Captain? If it was somebody else’s boat you could just stop listening but this is happening in the dining room, around the pool and the Captain is starting to get pissed off with it. Have you ever seen one of those videos of a retail worker finally deciding they have put up with enough of Karen’s shit!!
In the Twitter Ocean, there was only one big boat, and they spent a long time kicking the rats off the boat, after a while, you get too many rats and you just don’t have the time to get them off the ship… you end up with rat shit… everywhere. The Captain’s paid good money for his boat and is too busy trying to charge people entry into the pool to spend any more time dealing with the rats. When the whole place starts to smell like that toilet from Trainspotting the passengers just swim off to the next Ocean.
Now in the Ocean of Mastodon, the Ships and Boats are free, yes you have to pay to keep the lights on and the shifts are long but the Captain’s focus is on that cool connection to their like-minded passengers, that common connection. That makes it all worth the effort, right?
Well… one of the biggist ships mastodon.lol with 76,281 passengers just got rats and as far as I’m aware this is the first big ship in our Ocean to get rats, some have been kicked overboard by the Captain, passengers are starting to rebel and now there is shit… everywhere! The passengers have been blaming the Captain, but they don’t want to leave the ship; they have asked to speak to the MANAGER! but we only have Captains here.
I’m my opinion the Captain has done the only thing a Captain can do, and should do, in this situation.
Sink the fucking boat and teach them horrible rats a valuable lesson. Don’t shit where you eat!
I feel bad for the passengers that were just chilling by the pool sharing the love with other like-minded passengers, I really do, I would be more than happy for you to hang out with me on my boat. But I also hope that the rats realise that in this new world, people won’t put up with your shit and are more than happy to let the air out of your dinghy of yours if you don’t play nice.
Just play nice people.
Phil GB
(Source of Mastodon Stats: https://observablehq.com/@simonw/mastodon-users-and-statuses-over-time