"I’m on Mastodon, begrudgingly.... My harassers are also on Mastodon; some have multiple accounts. The blocking feature is like horror house anxiety game- I block when I see their new account, hoping I’ve now blocked all of them but knowing I probably never will. Because it’s a federated system, and you can have accounts on multiple servers, it means there’s multiple accounts I have to block to create some digital safety and distance."
-Caroline Sinders (🔗 next post)
HT @jdp23
Wait, just this? No other context? This is from 2022. No "how it started / how it's going"? Who is @carolinesinders? Or @sinders? I'm supposed to just know? I guess I'm not clued in enough to be a follower. 🫤
Ok, having milked what I could from the article before being prompted to log in, yes, whiteness is an issue. Yes, the luxury... wait...
Whiteness is a problem *everywhere*. Are we singling out Mastodon?
Oh, I get it. For not being the exception. (Not being sarcastic.)
Yeah, we always think we're the white knights. (Um... <embarrassed eye shifting gif at unintended pun (who needs 1,000 words?)>)
Maybe I should just go back to Twitter?
Huh. It sure seems to me like @inquiline's replies has the context, for example:
"I''m posting Sinders' quote today because I'm continuing to reflect on architecture here, not least due to experiences I continue to have with targeted harassment."
And for how it's going:
"I cannot in good faith recommend Mastodon to anyone who's likely to be targeted--and folks who use this place comfortably may want to think about this, as well"
And while harassment is certainly a major issue I also hear a lot of complaints from women about other cultural issues here. So it's worth thinking about your response and how it contributes to the climate here. Do you want Mastodon to have a reputation for being the kind of place where a woman posting about harassment gets a hostile reply from a guy who hasn't even bothered to read the thread?
If so, well done! But if that's not how you want people to see Mastodon ... consider a different approach.
Sometimes you have to click "open in browser" to see the whole thread.
It's a federation thing, relevant to threads where you're not following the person who wrote it: sometimes one post will have reached your instance and the rest of the thread not, depending on who's boosted what.
I think the problem was that there was zero indication that there was any sort of context. I feel like there's a bunch of people On Here who just post stuff as if "of course you know the context, and if you don't, you're not worthy," and sometimes it just irks me no end.
But thanks for the tip; much better than making assumptions about me.
tools for commensality 🧿
John Lusk
Jon
Jennifer Moore 😷