*** The Club ***

Greetings. As I continue to view the ongoing discussions here about the #Mastodon onboarding process -- about which I've of course been quite critical -- I continue to get an "exclusive country club" vibe in many (but by no means all) replies, that I find quite disturbing indeed.

That is, a "we only want the *right* kind of people here" attitude -- expressed via a wide range of wording and in terms both subtle and crude.

And this is genuinely causing me to question my own presence here.

While engagement has been very high and largely both enjoyable and informative, I don't do clubs with "entrance exams" -- whether they're explicit like I.Q. tests or more subtle like User Interface Follies.

While the parallels are not exact of course, I saw many of these sorts of controversies long ago during the rise and fall of Usenet. And yes, Usenet does technically exist today, but it's been a ghost in the wilderness, an impotent specter, for longer than many people reading this post have been alive.

The ongoing internecine disputes regarding Mastodon and the #Fediverse more generally stand a good chance of ultimately relegating both to the same kind of dismal future as Usenet. Many participants would probably be fine with this. "Leave us alone with our toys."

But for the enormous numbers of ordinary nontechnical folks currently feeling trapped in maelstroms like Elon's #Twitter, it would be a positive opportunity lost to society at large.

While the exact circumstances and wording have been subject to dispute since at least 1949, the great Groucho Marx, reportedly upon resigning from an exclusive L.A. area country club, is quoted as having said words to the effect of:

"I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."

There is still much to think about in that handful of words, even so many years later in 2023.

Best, -L