I am extremely fond of Mastodon. I want to hang out here for a good long time. But I'm seeing a lot of my friends quietly detach from this place because there's so much "here are the etiquette rules for this tea shop, I can't believe you didn't lift your pinky" going around that, well, who has the energy for that these days?

I cope by just ignoring most of that, but then, I've got no following or public career to worry about.

@fade I took a few days and researched possible instances to join and every one of them that looked interesting had rules that went far beyond "be a non-shitty human" into "this kind of post is allowable under these circumstances only" and I decided to stay on the main instance where I could promote stuff freely.

I have been a moderator - it is extremely complicated and many people spend all their free time finding ways to not follow rules. I sympathize with mods.