Notices by Sam (samuteki@ohay.ooo), page 2

I wish we lived in a kinder world.

How do you feel about social media going into 2024?

Just a reminder that the enslaved people of Haiti kicked their French masters' assess in war and the French forced them to pay reparations *to France* for loss of property (the slaves) and continued to receive reparations for 100 years if you're wondering about their moral fiber.

As a Black person with a profile picture that shows my Black face, I can get attacked online without even saying anything, so when you run up in here kicking the hornet's nest and cry when you get stung, not only do I have no sympathy for you, I resent you for the time it took me to block you.

Any belief system, whether political or religious or racial, that leads its adherents to believe they are superior to and better than other people will necessarily lead to inhumane and barbaric behavior by those adherents towards outside groups. It is a lesson history teaches us over and over again.

Anybody ever set up open source firmware on their router? Any tips, cautions?

Actually, I really do think we ought to trust the mega corporation with the track record of untrustworthy actions.

It's so awkward when you get a sudden desire to clean your whole apartment at like 12:30 at night...

I think this is the last thing I'll say about this stuff for a while, but: it seems like it's always people who are used to everything working and everyone catering to them who are willing to risk the destruction of places like this.

If something happens to Mastodon, they can find safe harbor on Bluesky or Threads or whatever new social media service appears. They will be just as safe there as they are here.

Until very recently, I have rejected the informal internet rule that states 'do not feed the trolls'.

I have rejected this advice because I have been attacked and harassed and mocked so often that it felt like letting someone get away with something (and where I'm from, you very much don't just let someone get away with that).

After all, I was the one being attacked—why should I have to be the bigger person? Why should I swallow my feelings? (And also, when I really put my mind to it you might think it's Thanksgiving the way I roast these turkeys.)

There's another adage about troll types: Don't wrestle with a pig, because you both get dirty and the pig likes it.

I have a troll on Birdsite that is so desperately obsessed with me that they have resorted to attacking me via comments to my posts by people who haven't blocked them yet.

This is profoundly pathetic precisely because I have blocked this person, and they gave up for a few months (it would seem, obviously I have them blocked).

But for whatever reason, they returned. They found something in life that gave them some sense of purpose. And then it went away. And now they're back, to hate on me, because that past emptiness has returned.

I do not empathize with my attacker. I merely see, now, clearly and for the first time, that the reason these people say the vile things that they do online is not even because they believe what they're saying (though many do)—but instead, it's to make you feel as bad as they do. It's to release their sadness and anguish by finding someone else to instigate fights with via a computer.

They just want to take another minute, *another second*, away from your life.

It's not about logic. It's not about facts. You're not going to 'reach them'. You're not going to change their mind.

Don't feed the trolls. Not to be the better person: but because they are so very hungry, and the only thing they can eat is your peace.

One of my absolute favorite people in the world has fallen on some hard times. If you've got the ability to do so, a donation via ko-fi would be very much appreciated by the both of us. (She's also got some fantastic writing on her ko-fi site, so check that out too!)

♥ Please boost! ♥

https://ko-fi.com/biankahbailey
#AidRequest #MututalAid #BegPost

Setting boundaries shouldn't threaten or upset people that actually care about you.

People who become upset or threatened by the setting of a boundary are people who consciously or subconsciously take those boundaries as a personal affront or insult, some kind of criticism, or otherwise they are manipulative people who see that you will resist their control.

Big social media thrives on anger. It thrives on shock and antagonism. Showing you posts that will make you upset means you will boost the site's advertising revenue, and making posts that upset you mean instigators of the culture war can build their audience and reach.

Until they figure out how to make money some other way )perhaps through subscriptions), big social media will always play both sides in the culture war it helped to create, and it will continue to sell your peace and mental health to enrich themselves.

Big social media is great for making money and expanding the profile of celebrities, but it's otherwise millions of people in the same room screaming for attention and usually finding that the more extreme the things they scream about get, and the angrier their screams get, the more of a platform they can eke out for themselves.

Moderators can help reduce the impact of trolls and grifters and provocateurs, but not if they are outnumbered and overwhelmed. This is why sites like Twitter and Reddit etc are always plagued by these problems despite having moderation teams: a site's user base can only get so big before the toxicity reproduces exponentially, radicalizing some into extremism and baiting anti-extremists into argumentative styles they otherwise would not have adopted. The social media site becomes the site of an actual culture war.

White Sams are in crisis. As a Black Sam, who has never been fired from a job or thrown into jail, I am willing to offer my professional consulting services for the low low price of $1,000,000 US an hour.

If you give a damn about your own safety, make sure you actually check out someone's profile before you follow them back.