It took me a while to figure out. Like I knew Southerners can be mean and judgy, but I didn’t think about how until I traveled to other places and saw how much more straightforward people are. It’s nice when kindness is kindness and there’s no underlying meaning.

Proudly have never had that said to me lol

It’s a subtly, yeah. There’s a lot of reading between the lines along, which is annoying if you’re not used to it.

Growing up in the South is learning to be mean by way of looking nice.

Not really. They never wanted a large instance and didn’t want to become a Reddit replacement. I see them more like a federated Tildes, honestly.

It’s available in the UK as well. They don’t follow EU privacy laws.

Same. 30s, healthcare, no linux. Not even tech savvy at all, but I can follow directions well enough.

Like all social media, you have to curate it. I follow hashtags for cats, books, writing, fandoms, etc. The rage is minimum then because my homepage doesn’t have politics or news. I actually do follow a couple of news sources, but their stuff is surrounded by an ocean of fun things so it’s not nearly as bad.

They could have used the Silmarillion instead. That thing is chock full of information a lot of people don’t know that could have been used.

Roleplaying in AOL chatrooms. I remember joining this group who roleplayed as vampires and hanging out in the “local tavern.” I was only 9 and in hindsight half of what people were doing was hooking up, but it made me love writing.

Later on, I really enjoyed LiveJournal and staying up way too late reading fanfiction with my friends on AIM/MSN messenger.

Early Google. When AskJeeves fizzled away but SEO and ads hadn’t taken over.