someeone linked me to a mastodon so i immediately asked "who runs it", then pulled up the admin's account and started going through their favorites. after finding the same friend of mine three times i closed the page in disgust
so that's it. my friends don't exist anymore. there's only fractions of friends. a thousand little shards of a friend. when i ask for your mastodon account, how many will you send me? can you even fit them in a tweet? will you remember how many shards of yourself you created
how many do i have to follow? will you notify me every time you make a new one? how? what if i miss it? what if i'm out of town and not online for the one week you're regularly reposting your new handle and i don't follow it. how long before i realize?
how much of your life will i miss because i didn't realize you split off a new identity just for the sake of following a writer you like, and then happened to post a major life change from that account?
when i want to ask how your boyfriend is doing with therapy, what account will i check to make sure you didn't break up? how many accounts? what are you, anymore, on here, if there is no cohesive handle?
you could act indignant but this is how we've interacted for eight years. this is how we met. this is all we've ever been to each other. we did not meet in 1998. this is how we've always communicated. is that what you intended to get rid of?
i reiterate: i will have nothing to do with this, thank you. i refused to use facebook etc long before i hated it on moral grounds, simply because i'm not willing to split myself into a thousand separate identities with their own maintenance.
i'm sorry, friend. you aren't worth that much uncertainty. i love you and i wish you the best, and i am staying here unless you intend to move, exactly once, and all at once, to someplace new, and never come back, and not split your identities.
i may follow you somewhere. i will not split myself into a hundred tendrils, each desperately trying to hang on to a splinter of your self that you cast off to pursue different lives. i don't have that many cores in my CPU. i can handle one thread. i will look at one website.
it's why i don't know people on twitter *and* IRC *and* discord *and* telegram. everyone who knows me knows i communicate with you on *one* of these things. that's where we know each other. i will not chase you from place to place, endlessly trying to keep up.
if everyone moves to mastodon and disappears into the woodwork, into a million particles I can't follow, then i will miss you. i'm sorry. it was good while it lasted, and if twitter really has ruined itself (as it seems to be doing) then I wish you luck in your life.
get in touch with me when you've all picked a single instance, owned by a nonprofit organization with a charter and legally binding contracts, and i'll join you on that day
in the meantime i'll just be a lot lonelier and i'll work on myself. best of luck.
