
A Matter of Choice
When it comes to social media, you get what you give.
So it appears Wil Wheaton has been run off YET ANOTHER social network.
Shocking…
Arguably the biggest celebrity on Mastodon to date, Wheaton was banned from his chosen Mastodon instance by one of their admins after constantly being (falsely) reported by trolls from other instances.
Let us grasp the sheer buffoonery going on here.
BUT first a quick Mastodon Primer:

Mastodon: A federated open-source social network akin to Twitter
Instance: Like email, one can sign up to 1000’s of Mastodon servers, AKA Instances (think Gmail vs Yahoo vs Hotmail.) Like email where you can send or block anyone with an email address, you can follow or block anyone on any other instance with a @user@instance.com address (unless your instance blocks theirs outright.) Each instance has their own rules of moderation. From the Wild Wild West, to the wokest totalitarian gulag. And also like email, you can outright block any instance (you’re on totesnazzy.cuck? sorry. all y’all are blocked.)
Fediverse: The decentralized realm of federated Mastodon instances.
Birdsite: The pejorative given to Twitter.
After many years, millions of blocks of varying merit, and with much self-fanfare, Wil Wheaton left Twitter after Jack refused his demands to “BAN ALL THE THINGS!” (As though he was Picard himself.)

He then decides to hang his hat at Mastodon, an open-source, decentralized social network based on the concept These U-nited States itself is (was/still should be) based upon, Federation. With Mastodon’s federated nature, it allows one to associate with only those whom you wish, and silence those you don’t…
…and he STILL can’t manage it.
To be completely fair, I don’t hate Wil. I’d never harass him (criticism isn’t harassment), and I think doing so is petty, stupid and speaks more about yourself than of him. I also think he is exactly the type of person who engages in those tactics without a hint of self-awareness. Without any sense of proportion, context or reason, he’s labeled any opinions opposing his as Ye Ol’ racist/facist/nazi/bigot/fartknocker monikers.
With those platitudes out of the way, let’s enumerate all they ways he failed on the #fediverse, shall we?
1. He had/has a choice (a key concept here) of 1000s of instances to choose from, and of every level of moderation conceivable.
Was that good enough?
Nope.

2. As an intelligent, tech-savvy and well-to-do person, for less than a Starbucks coffee a month he could spin up his own hosted instance where he can be the moderator/godhead/dictator and adjudicate his own (bizarre) level of moderation and associate/disassociate with any instance or user he chooses with ease.
Was that good enough?
Nope.

3. His celebrity (as much as it is, and of which I have none) affords him a level of influence few have. Especially being the most famous person on the #fediverse, he could pretty much dictate his own terms with the admin of any instance. And with his Twitter history, would be justified in doing so.
Was that good enough?
Nope.

4. For whatever reason, the ability to mute/block trolls is an insult.
Again to be fair, on a site with 100s of millions of users, one can’t expect to mute/block ALL the haters.
But Mastodon is in its infancy. He can even personally block entire instances himself directly. No mod required.
Nope. Still can’t even…

There’s a common theme to all this.
Choice. And his refusal of it.
With a stunning level of unconsciousness, his blog post describing these recent events is titled:
“The world is a terrible place right now, and that’s largely because it is what we make it.”

At every step, on Twitter, on Mastodon, Wil refuses to make any effort whatsoever to take responsibility for his experience on social media. To ask him to do so is somehow an insult.
Somehow he’d blame the hot stove for burning them when they touch it. Somehow, choice isn’t an opportunity or a tool…
It’s an unjust burden.
And now, I present a 1 minute solution to Wil’s Ills ™

Make an anon account, separate your hWil hWheaton brand from yourself. Follow, comment, exist on any platform as just some rando.
Alas, that’s not egocentric.
THIS is why things like this will occur over and over to Wil. He refuse to use his agency. He demands others accommodate their world to his expectations, and will view any reciprocation as actual violence. In the context of the online world, anyone who dares not to submit to Wil’s unknowable, arbitrary and quantum-ly improbable morality shall pay. And in *current year* his position is legion.
We can only hope those who subscribe to his viewpoint will fail on it’s merit-less merits.
