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Maybe it’s due to being autistic but I have no idea how others perceive me.

For three years of my life on the Fediverse, I pretty much just talked to myself and was content with that. I would say whatever and it wouldn’t matter because nobody was reading anything anyway.

When someone responded to one of my posts, it was usually spam. When it was actually someone real talking to me, it was like speaking to a unicorn.

Then one day, people started talking back. And what’s more they gave a damn about my opinions. For what reason, I don’t know. They just did.

Because some people talked to me, more people started talking to me. And everything started carrying more weight.

The moment I realized that I crossed the precipice of influence was when, one day, I typed some Unicode into a post.

This got lots of accessibility advocates angry. They were specifically angry because I was deemed an “influential” account. So I cut it out and haven’t posted any Unicode that way ever since.

Because of this, I have become more and more careful about what I post on this account. For example, I used to talk about my personal life. Things that I thought were innocuous upset people. One particular time, I said that my daughter and I listen to vinyl every day. That post got lots of blowback, and so I’ve stopped sharing stuff like that.

Sometimes people assign motivations where there is none. Recently, people have suddenly assumed I have something against #FediPact. This is not the case, and though I have not joined FediPact, I sympathize—and have even set up notmeta.social as a #Calckey server that pre-emptively defederates Meta.

Constantly, I get messages asking if I have something against this person or that service. And almost always, it’s never. If you think I do, talk to me directly, and I’m happy to iron out any misunderstandings.

In my actual life, I do my best to avoid conflict—to the point it annoys people. If I genuinely don’t like someone, I don’t argue with them. I make it impossible for them to contact me.

If you can contact me, it means that I probably like you.