Nowadays it's 2022 and well, the fedi is gaining a taste of mainstream popularity. Jim joined the fediverse and regardless of your opinion of him, he's maintained a cult fanbase who will follow him everywhere. This is where the strengths of the fedi shine.

Many people joined Poast but when they didn't get alone with that website's very specific community (which I understand 100%), they made their own instances.

Which is where the fediverse comes in. The fediverse isn't just something you sign up for like Twitter and have content fed to you curated by corporations/NGOs/Twitter Staff/"the algorithm"/the CIA, it's probably the most "organic" social media website since it's run by you, the user. No really. You can host your own server very easily and that's the point behind hosting it on this old Sun that has cousins in museums. If you're a misfit, you can join the fedi.

Jim joining the fedi and having users stay was no accident, but it shined on one of the advantages of the fedi. Before Jim joined, everyone else censored from the mainstream internet had been joining it. Everyone from the old-school nerds, fringe political dissidents, furries feeling out of place with the monoculture of the modern fandom, to shitposters online who wanted to laugh at the adventures of a fat man getting into fights with everyone on earth, to just random people who felt out of place on the enforced culture of Twitter.com. Even better is it feels more like an old forum or your old friend circle than Twitter does, and I feel more at home here than I ever did on Twitter. Okay there aren't artists on here, but you know what? I'd take feeling like I'm around people who aren't living Postal 2 NPCs over that.

I remember back in the day it was very common for a younger nerd or NEET to be hosting video games, websites, and files on a 1u server or old Dell Optiplex under his bed or in his closet. Or better, he'd host it on an old laptop with a smashed LCD and broken hinges and dust clogged fan running at maximum 24/7. I knew a lot of people like this and I still respect them.

If you're one of those nerds (you know who you are and I salute you), you can host a fediverse instance. Go to your local dumpster/thrift store/recycler and find a Core 2 Duo computer or buy some cheap i5 from eBay/some recycler, or get a thin client like a WYSE DX0Q. Slap Debian on it, and then slap on Pleroma with the guide. Set up a dynamic DNS via either no-ip or your domain provider, and forward ports 80 and 443, and make sure you have a directory so that let's encrypt can do it's thing.

Or pay like $5 for a VPS you find on lowendbox or even try Fediverse Express.