When Andrew Lee bought (kinda?) Freenode and blew it up last year, I was surprised by how quickly one rich dude could tank a long-standing social network with an established community, and baffled why someone would spend so much money just to burn something down.

That was cute.

Every Mastodon explanation is like "It's very simple, your account is part of a kerflunk, and each kerflunk can talk to each other as part of a bumblurt. At the moment everyone you flurgle can see your bloops but only people IN your kerflunk can quark your nerps. Kinda like email."

I’ve been here for years and I’m an instance admin and I still don’t really know how the posts go from one website to another. I think it’s the same technology they use to send pokemon to a different game boy

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at and repair."

Douglas Adams