Melancholic Mediocrity 
Almost 4 years ago Mastodon, and by extension the Fediverse, became and continues to be essentially my sole social media platform.
A significant factor in this was when I discovered Pinafore and immediately fell in love. You know when you use software that just *feels* right, like Corel Paradox or Turbo Pascal and so on?
I was using Paradox daily at a former employer sixteen years after Corel ceased active development, and it could very well still be in use there today. Pinafore quickly became as vital for me as Paradox was for the more than eight years I worked there.
Unfortunately Pinafore's creator archived the project, but it lives on in various forks, of which I hopped from one to the next as each one eventually became archived, or dormant, or disappeared altogether (Anyone remember Mahoot?).
It's almost like the project is cursed, because I know of at least half a dozen Pinafore variants that all started out with great intentions and noticeable activity but eventually fell silent.
At least.. a year ago maybe? a bug was introduced somewhere along the line that caused buffers to hang if any posts fall under a "hide with warning" filter were found. Watching the spinning circle of dots endlessly loading, refreshing because *sometimes* that fixed things, as it triggered a BPD meltdown in me countless times.
Other issues or lacking vital new features (translation, editing a post, etc.) caused me to very reluctantly try other front-ends but I just couldn't deal with it. I even tried consciously *forcing* myself to use the other ones and despite the aforementioned buffering problem, I found Pinafore and its successors *less* maddening than these other interfaces. (No offense to the other front-ends; they're all amazing projects and work great for some people, but for whatever reasons they just don't work well for me.)
As I mentioned before, the Pinafore-style interface just fit my needs perfectly. So I just continued to be frustrated because I didn't have the knowledge/experience.
Yesterday, however I discovered @dome 's new Pinafore fork, Zocial. (Pinafore -> Semaphore -> Enafore -> Zocial). It's available at https://zocial.ztfr.eu.
Unfortunately, Zocial is "slopware", but this is the only practical opportunity I have to attain a fully-operational Pinafore-style interface. I honestly believe it's a matter of accessibility because no other front-end has given me the freedom to learn about the Fediverse more than Pinafore.
Maybe I'm being a selfish, neurotic, myopic Goldilocks. I have no rebuttal for those accusations and I apologize for disappointing anyone, but the Fedi is basically my makeshift warm line and I need to keep that as easy for me to use as possible because I can't function without it.
Yes, I know.. "just don't use it!" Yes, I realize if Nolan Lawson had never developed Pinafore, life would go on. Life would also continue if we'd never invented defibrillators, but they sure are handy sometimes.
@dome fixed the above-mentioned bug, and a couple of others, in a matter of minutes today. It feels like finally being rid of a sore tooth. I hadn't realized just how infuriated I was becoming rather than coping.
Look, if someone wants to fork Enafore and repair the bugs that Claude already took care of, I'll almost certainly follow because with all due respect to @dome, I trust a human programmer more than I trust AI output.
However, that just doesn't seem to be possible. We're humans, and humans (understandably) have lives that aren't always congruent to dev plans.
But I personally *need* this interface to work. I love it. Surely I can't be the only one either, with so many people making forks of Pinafore.
So.. it's up to you dear reader (if you're even still awake) to decide if you want to try Zocial, but as for me I've already jumped head-first into it slop or not.
/end_essay
Dome
