Journalists abandon Twitter for Mastodon, the results are hilarious
"Just make your own Twitter" is very much a reality with the way Mastodon allows you to make your own community, but journalists trying to create their own echo chambers are eating each other.
Anyone who has ever complained about the stifling nature of moderated discourse on any social media platform due to biases that are often ideological in nature has probably gotten a similar response from wannabe authoritarian trolls — “Just make your own platform if you don’t like it.” Well, there’s an option to do just that, now. And the results have been particularly amusing in the case of journalists fleeing Twitter for greener pastures in echo chambers that will protect them from seeing conflicting facts and opinions.
Mastodon is a decentralized social media platform that allows one to create their own private Twitter, essentially. Functioning more like Discord in this case, it allows one to control who has access to their private platform if they so choose. So you can imagine what elitists who don’t want to consort with the plebs might do, in that case. Except for their own sycophantic followers, of course.
Journalists who feel slighted by the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk and his actions thus far saw Mastodon as the preferred alternative that will allow them to build their own communities of fans of their work and colleagues they admire.
On paper, it sounds like a great way to build one’s brand and community. In practice for these journalists, however, the results have been more akin to crabs in a bucket.
Journalists Mike Pesca and Parker Malloy seem to have managed to upend one another from Mastodon by way of their own tiff over this New York Times article about puberty blockers. Apparently, discussing the article and the ins and outs of puberty blockers and their potential long term risks didn’t sit right with Parker Malloy, who is transgender themselves.
So this exchange ensued:
Long story short, they argued over the issue at hand — or rather, it being ‘transphobic’ to question anything related to transitioning minors — and then they both got ejected from Mastodon. Pesca’s ejection is evidenced by his tweet on the matter. It’s ironic to return to Twitter to complain about getting kicked off a Mastodon server, but I digress. I think they deserved one another, in the end.
Like I said: crabs in a bucket.
In fact, the server in question — journa.host — is now poisonous in the sense that it gained a reputation for ‘transphobia’ and is being actively censored by many servers on the Mastodon network, resulting in users of journa.host getting shadowbanned simply for being part of that particular server. This results in everything from the user’s reach getting severely curtailed on the network, effectively rendering them invisible to the point of others not being able to find them to follow them at all. Mastodon’s shadowbans don’t screw around, I guess. Decentralized indeed.
When left to their own devices, and with no one else by whom to be recreationally outraged, these journalists started attacking one another, often resulting in the banishment of the individuals that wore out their welcome by having their own opinion, and later, their banishers got their own comeuppance from on-high. So much for being decentralized if your server can just be nuked off the platform. That’s just Vijaya Gadde’s Twitter with extra steps, at that point.
Testament to how elitist the modern leftist journalist tends to be, it should come as no surprise when they attempt to filter out people from their field they would consider plebeian. One example is David Todd McCarty. He is a writer for the Cape May Standard, a publication that is local to Cape May, New Jersey. His experience with the elitists I’ve described is pictured below.
Yes, apparently if you’re not in the ‘in-crowd’ you’re an outcast on Mastodon servers, as well. At least in journalism spaces.
Try as he might, McCarty just couldn’t be pious enough to win his way into the club. Or so he says. I totally believe him, of course. But you have to admit, when you write about American flags being symbols of aggression, you just look like you’re pandering to the very same institutional lefties whose favor you desperately wish to curry. Especially since he saw fit to tie it all to ‘white nationalism’, as journalists of his political persuasion tend to do to score cheap points on unfounded claims. I guess I had better let my black neighbors with an American flag on their porch know that they’re white nationalists. But I digress.
McCarty’s story ends with a dose of amusing irony, as well. On November 10th, he wrote a piece about Mastodon being ‘the future of social media’. I wonder if he still feels that way after getting essentially rejected from the platform by his peers? I guess it depends on how entrenched his case of Stockholm syndrome in relation to his party happens to be.
I would be lying if I said it wasn’t highly amusing to witness these people eating each other, so to speak. The greater issue at hand for these institutional leftists, is that they can feel their death grip on online discourse slipping through their fingers by the day. Whether they’re of the journalist persuasion or some other corrupted institution, it is paramount that they get a handle on what the eyes and ears of the public are seeing and hearing. Their livelihoods depend on it.
If you ever wondered what that snitch kid from school is up to nowadays, he might just be plonking along as a journalist, telling on everyone in his favorite Mastodon server if they said something verboten.
I may have to jump on Mastodon at some point just to see how long I last. Not that I’ll get into the cool kids’ servers. I’m just a lowly Substack writer. But I’ll gladly take freedom of expression over authoritarian oppression.