one thing I think that might be lost on newcomers is the fact that this past week has been BANANAS for everyone who's been on the site for years, and if you feel like people are being snippy or pushy about social norms, that's probably why.
on a normal week when people talk about "hey please CW that" or "please don't spam your tweets here with a crossposter" or whatever they're more likely to do so patiently and explain the reasoning behind why we do things that way but on a day like today things are more likely to get a little snippy or terse.
don't take it personally! the old timers are trying to maintain social norms in the face of a flood of change, and they're worn out. keep that in mind if you think to yourself "hm; this place doesn't seem that friendly". give it some time to get back to normal before you bounce.
@technomancy I keep thinking that fedi people might look back on this as our Eternal September--a time when the rapid influx of new users overwhelmed acculturation processes.
Which, I dunno, may be a welcome change in some ways--fedi culture is this weird mix of anarchic "a cool crime is to blow up a corporate headquarters" with hyperconservative "human faces are too stressful to see and should have a content warning on them". Some more Normal People (TM) might do us good?
@aphyr @technomancy I really don't see how that's a "weird mix" at all. The difference is that this place much more strongly centers around queer, neurodiverse, disabled etc. folks than Twitter does - and that's where that culture comes from. I don't see any reason why that would need to be "balanced out" (ie. demarginalized).
@joepie91 Speaking as like... an ADHD gay boy with chronic fatigue who's been here since 2017: it's weird! It's extremely weird here! I generally like it, but there is a yawning chasm between how people on fedi act and, like, basically any real-world conversation *in our marginal groups*.
Just this morning a queer pal looked into joining fedi and noped out because he saw people insisting that a line drawing of a person not making eye contact should be CW: eye contact. We look *nuts* sometimes.
@aphyr I'm sure that some people have some incompatible expectations at times, but that's really nothing different from any interpersonal disagreements in any community - and I've absolutely been in IRL spaces that were culturally not far removed from what I see here on fedi.
I certainly don't see "actively bring in more of the culture that consistently and sometimes violently suppresses atypical identities" as the solution to that; if anything, I would expect it to make it *worse*, because it does not tolerate weirdness.
And it's very odd to me to call eye-contact CWs a "hyper-conservative" thing - it's the exact opposite, it's about being mindful of other people's comforts and not just your own. That is not what conservatism does.
If there's a disagreement over community rules, fine. Discuss it, figure it out, resolve the conflict into something that everybody involved can live with. But don't blame it on the weirdness. Baby, bathwater, etc.
