In October 2022, everyone’s favorite Nazi, Elon Musk, bought Twitter. As a reaction to this, hundreds of Mastodon servers sprung up from the ground, run by volunteers all over the world. This included one particular instance, Famichiki, which was initially run by Kevin, Pippa, and myself. Lukas joined a few weeks, or maybe days, later as a systems administrator.
The server has been online most of the time, and while other instances came and went, Famichiki still stands strong. Not without controversy here and there, but standing nevertheless.
About four months into running Famichiki, after some moderator infighting, I gave Lukas, Kevin, and Pippa an ultimatum: leave the mod team or accept me as your dictator to have the final word on admin and moderator decisions. No one really gave a shit except for Kevin, who left and accused us of having personal agendas. I can barely keep track of what’s on my calendar, let alone have an agenda.
About a year later, we had a user go out and mix themselves into conversations, throwing around wild accusations. After I told this user to “tone it down”—looking back, a poor choice of words, but I still stand by my decision to ask them not to fan flames that were already burning half the world down—they went public with my mod message. I was accused of racism and of being a piece of shit in general by a few other instances. That was a fun few weeks. Eventually, this user left for the .art instance, where they may or may not still reside. I hope they are well, regardless.
Realizing we could do with more people on the mod team, we expanded and welcomed FlockOfCats and SavvyKenya. As Lukas focused more on his career, we also added PiePants as both a moderator and systems administrator.
Another fun week was when one of our users was harassed, and after banning what seemed like half the Fediverse, I started getting harassed personally. There truly is no limit to the number of piss-weak men on the internet who feel that the most productive way to spend their time is by being a cunt.
Between then and now, not much has happened. Or maybe it has, and I forgot about it.
Of course, I can’t write such beautiful and emotionally touching words that look back without reason. After three years of shenanigans, I’m going to stop administering and moderating Famichiki. It will be left in the more-than-capable hands of PiePants, SavvyKenya, FlockOfCats, and Pippa. So fret not, Famichiki will continue to run, and shitposts will continue to be made.
Logistically, my stepping down will be simple. We’re going to swap payment methods for our hosting to PiePants as primary systems administrator, with FlockOfCats as a backup. In November, I’ll tally up the final balance and transfer the donations left in my bank account to PiePants. Of course, I’ll stick around to help during the transition. This fucking instance will not go down.
Moderating an instance is a lot of work, much more than you’d think, and when your instance is even remotely populated and active, you will have to deal with abuse. People are sending you money to keep something online, which adds all the more pressure. People will always have something to complain about. People will always say you’re doing something wrong. People will always say you’re not doing enough. All the otsukaresamas in the world do not negate that negativity.
How cliché that after the whole thyroid cancer thing, I realized I’m not spending enough time on things I actually enjoy doing. Hence, my decision to stop.
It was fun, some parts of it, anyway, but all things must come to an end, including this.
Brian