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<title>a shatter down the hall - Archive - MayVaneDay Studios</title>
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<p align="center"><b>MayVaneDay Studios (Gopher Edition)</b></p>
<p><b>a shatter down the hall</b></p>
<p><b>published: 12-27-2018</b></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>I've been drifting from phlog to phlog the past few days. I think it was a post by the illustrious <a href="gopher://baud.baby/0/phlog/fs20181106.txt">cat</a> of FAX SEX that pushed me to trawl through the <a href="gopher://sdf.org/1/users">SDF user index</a> in search of some active phlogs.</p>
<p>The first thing you see is the sheer enormity of the index. My posts rarely go beyond three pages in fullscreen on Lynx, but the SDF user index has a whopping twenty-one pages, all sorted in alphabetical order.</p>
<p>The second thing you notice is that almost all of the directories are... abandoned. Some people never put anything in their Gopher directories; some put only an &quot;under construction&quot; or &quot;test&quot; file in the index and left it at that. It's common to go entire pages without seeing one updated in the past year. Some have even stood abandoned since 2003, if they have any files in them at all.</p>
<p>The SDF prides itself on being one of, if not <em>the</em>, oldest publix UNIX systems around. But what's the point on being old if there's barely anyone left? Just a bunch of hermits, repelling prospective members away when they see there's barely anything left?</p>
<p>I won't bother you with the tales of the SDF's spotty administration; cat's post above already goes in far more detail, and I wasn't there to witness any of it anyway. But I'm going to start mirroring the few remnants I can find onto my own gopherhole, just in case the SDF does come crashing down one day and takes three decades of internet history with it.</p>
<p>In other news, my experiment in setting up as many fediverse alts as possible to evade censorship, both via suspensions and instance blocks, failed spectacularly. A while back, the <a href="https://freespeechextremist.com/users/p">admin of the Pleroma instance Free Speech Extremist</a> followed me out of the blue. Immediately, warning bells went off in my head- free speech-type instances on the fediverse inevitably end up being a buzzing hive of MAGA chuds. But <span class="citation">@p</span> seemed to be a pretty chill dude, and he wasn't spouting off slurs every five posts like I've come to expect from the right-wing side of the fediverse, so I followed him back, and we existed as alright mutuals for a while.</p>
<p>I joined his instance, and immediately I was met with a certain bible-thumping reply guy calling me a f*ggot and chucking ad-hominems at me like we were on a sinking ship and dumping cargo in a desperate attempt to stay alive. Not that I'm angry at him, or personally hurt- just disappointed that I ventured into this relative great unknown (since most of the instances I was on before had instance-blocked FSE wholesale), expecting to find god-tier bantering and forbidden knowledge that would make any communist shrink back in fear, and I only found vitriol in return.</p>
<p><em>Maybe</em> my expectations were a little too high. It's not the admin's fault, of course; he does a sufficient job of keeping actually illegal stuff off his instance, and his rules seem to be enforced fairly and consistently. <del>If he's reading this right now, you're doing great work, and I wish you all the best.</del> <b>(EDIT 1-3-2018: Actually, never mind. He decided to set up a <a href="https://wagesofsinisdeath.com/users/ReadTheBible">Westboro Baptist Church-themed instance</a> to harass others in the pursuit of "becoming the most blocked instance on the fediverse." What a loser.)</b> But the effort that I would have to put in to make FSE a pleasant place to spend my time would be better spent elsewhere.</p>
<p>And then I realized something:</p>
<p>What's the point of social media if you're not going to be social on it?</p>
<p>So I got rid of most of my other alts. I doubt anyone was sad to see me go, especially since one of the instances was nigh-abandoned and the admin apparently hadn't shown up since the beginning of October. I'm down to five now: my angelkin bot, my mains both on the Mastodon and Pleroma versions of ILL, a backup on hidden.blue, and the SDF one I use exclusively for blog updates. The communities on these are either near-nonexistent, only interact with me like I were one of their colleagues, or are run by one of my friends.</p>
<p>Despite the stable nature of this arrangement, I understand that nothing is set in stone. The SDF could kick me off anytime, or I could have a falling-out with my chippie friends, or someone I used to know could come guns blazing with a fake callout post and smear me beyond any defense. Not that I expect to, but I once thought I would be friends forever with my former kinnie group, to the point where I was making arrangements to escape to live with one of them.</p>
<p>To mangle the words of <a href="gopher://grex.org:70/0/~papa/pgphlog/2018/alm-Antisocial_Media_Manifesto">the Antisocial Media Manifesto</a>: the process of asserting one's freedom on the internet, whether that be freedom from surveillance or freedom to choose one's association or lack therof, is never-ending. There is no permanent safe haven for us in this world.</p>
<p>One must be prepared to flee at a moment's notice if the need arises.</p>
<p>One must not be afraid of death and the rebirth to follow.</p>
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