We were reminded recently of the XKCD comic 686: Admin Mourning.

That single comic is profound in its own right, as the loss of a single being matters.

But this got us thinking about what it means when an entire fediverse instance goes offline for good 🥺😔

In the 3 years since we abandoned the sinking ship of mastodon dot lol, we alone have made over 30 thousand posts on our current instance.

If we ever were to migrate elsewhere, we could not take those posts, or any of the media, with us.

But that alone doesn't convey the whole story.

We've interacted with so many people, and our posts have been seen and shared by so many other beings.

We've made so many friends and got to know and befriend so many folks, even if we've increasingly struggled to keep in touch with most of them.

If this instance ever ceases to be, even if somebody archives the entire server somehow, it won't just be the links to posts that will go dead: it'll be so much deeper.

English has the word nostalgia to describe the intense, bittersweet pain of wanting to return to a home or familiar surroundings, though it has gradually taken on the additional meaning of being a place or time that you cannot return to.

From what we understand, old Welsh has a similar but stronger word -- hireath -- which roughly translates as an intense yearning or longer for a past or home that specifically no longer exists and which you can never return to.

That reminds us of Gollum's Song (performed by Emilíana Torrini) from the end of The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, particularly the lyrics:

You are lost

You can never go home

Maybe a being or entity dies when they are forgotten, but an instance can die when it goes permanently offline without backups or archives.

We guess it's an uncomfortable reminder that nothing and nobody will last forever.

#fedi #fediverse #Mastodon #existential #transience #ephemerality #InstanceShutdown

RITUAL OF DESCENT - EPHEMERALITY [OFFICIAL EP STREAM] (2025) SW EXCLUSIVE

https://peertube.gravitywell.xyz/w/vMR7qPygEcDTTHXFezbbYe

RITUAL OF DESCENT "EPHEMERALITY" OUT NOW!

https://peertube.gravitywell.xyz/w/nCUcCSR3U3c7WWWyxPkaLR

#NowPlaying #FullAlbum The self-titled EP by Ephemerality from Beijing, China 🎶

It's on bandcamp here:
https://ephemerality.bandcamp.com/album/ephemerality

Fav. track: 人间弃子

And it's still #BandcampFriday for an hour 😊

#Music #Metal #MelodicDeathMetal #Ephemerality #朝生暮死

"Loneliness" and "ephemerality" at the time of withering are beautiful

#photography #nature #art #flower #flowers #花 #写真 #紫陽花 #アジサイ #hydrangea #collection #summer #earlysummer #beautiful #beauty #Loneliness #ephemerality

What I really miss about #Twitter: being able to find tweets people wrote fifteen years ago.
I wonder what the half-life of #Mastodon servers is.

https://mastodon.technology , an instance with 20k users is shutting down by the end of the year, taking with it all posts and media that people created there.

#Ephemerality

https://ashfurrow.com/blog/mastodon-technology-shutdown/