Gaz celebrating the second anniversary of Gamepad.club
Good Morning Folks! The weird thing about having a fixed schedule for your blog posts, is that you feel really weird changing it. As such I contemplated making this blog post over the weekend on Saturday, because the 25th was the second anniversary of Gamepad.club the Mastodon/Fediverse server that I assist with. That sounds rather clinical, but in truth Gamepad has become my home on the internet and the local feed and various other folks on the “Fedi” my extended family. Thankfully Gaz was better about posting at the appropriate time than I was. This little project continues to be one of the things that I am most proud of… which sounds weird considering that this was mostly Gaz’s doing and I have just helped out a bit behind the scenes along with Scopique and Aywren. In truth the last two years have been pretty damned smooth save for a few cases where we had to mass defederate some spammer sites.
non-public information blurred out as well as someone’s account that was labeled “secret” just in case.
I was actually the second account signed up on this server and joined January 25th, 2023 at 3:36 PM my timezone. This was roughly 20 minutes after Gaz created his own account. Scopique came along on the 29th which is I think the day we went public with the server. We did a few days of burn in before properly promoting it and opening the floodgates. We’ve not grown to be a massive server, but managed to stay comfortably in the 120-150 active accounts range during the entire time. There are a little over 300 total accounts on the server, but as is the case with many new platforms… not everyone finds their home right away. Truth be told the Fediverse is too “DIY” for a lot of folks who just want a direct drop in replacement for Twitter. That said it has also been the only place I have ever truly felt 100% comfortable to let down my guard and be my exceptionally strange self. If this Tales of the Aggronaut blog is my true home on the internet, then Gamepad is my Neighborhood… in that old timey way of having block parties, potluck dinners, and such.
I had great hopes for the Twitter migration, and that we would end up enthralling a bunch of folks converting them to the way of Mastodon. That never quite worked out for various reasons, but for me it was an easy change. I had been screwing around with the Fediverse since 2018, so that in 2022 when I felt like it was time to separate myself from Twitter… I knew precisely where I would end up. That said… I bounced around quite a bit between sites, and it was only really when Gaz asked me about helping him with Gamepad.club that I found a permanent home. Essentially he wanted to create a safe harbor for our friends that were leaving Twitter, and he learned a lot of lessons while hosting the ill fated MMORPG.social knowing we could create something better this time around. I’m happy to say that two years later we have this very stable community, and it is a freaking delight to participate in it.
All of that said… I’ve reached the point where I am no longer attempting to recruit people. I spent the last year I was active on Twitter effectively making nothing but “come to mastodon” posts with primers and information on how to get started. I am sure everyone got more than sick of that. Folks have largely ended up over on Bluesky, which is a perfectly cromulent social platform and was effectively a direct cut and paste for Twitter. It took me a long while to realize it, but no one was really looking for a more open platform other than me and others that were like minded. I wanted a social network that I had more control over, and that was not going to blow away in the wind at the whims of some Oligarch. I feel justified that the continued downfall of Twitter has proven my viewpoint to be correct. That said… most folks just want something painfully simple that has the majority of their friends on it… and do not really care who is running the platform so long as they don’t have to pay for it.
The thing that is super interesting however is for the folks who actually care about having a more open and stable platform… they are also willing to chip in to help support it. In Gaz’s post on the anniversary he indicated that we have 25 folks who are supporting the Gamepad patreon. Which I believe is bringing in enough funds to pay the bills and keep the server up and running. Additionally recently there has been a call for a Merch shop of some sort, and we talked a bit about that over the weekend. I would not be opposed to such nonsense pending we can find a platform that effectively runs itself and drop ships items on our behalf. That would potentially be another avenue for supporting the server when there are overages in the various cloud hosting bills. I support the server by helping to admin it, but also chip in $10 per month because you can’t keep the lights on with good intentions. I’ve been thrilled to see so many folks who are similarly civic minded and want to help make this site available for everyone.
I think the era of Twitter is finally coming to an end… years later that many of us who fled to Mastodon/Fediverse predicted. Unfortunately the platform of choice turned out to be Bluesky, which puts the continued fate of the platform in the hands of more would be tech Oligarchs. If the entire Fediverse went to shit, Gamepad could effectively disconnect itself and remain stable and viable. If Bluesky goes to shit… it is dragging everything down with it. All of that said the platform seems reasonable for the time being and that is definitely where the folks looking for a direct Twitter replacement ended up. I kind of use Bluesky as my “public facing” account and Gamepad as my private account. While I federate my Gamepad account with Bluesky, I prolifically use the “followers” visibility to keep posts I want more “private” from going across that wire.
I am hoping that two years is only the beginning for this platform. Thanks to Gaz for kicking off this project, and thanks to everyone who has joined over the years and been active. I love you dearly, and look forward to hanging out with you in local over the coming years. Mastodon/Fediverse sadly feels like insider tech, that only some folks are really going to “grok”… but those who do… seem hooked for life.
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There is a certain irony in the fact that it took me this long to actually go through with deleting my Twitter account, given how much effort I put into my final days of properly using the platform in trying to convert folks to Mastodon. I stopped regularly using the site in 2022 and even went so far as to deactivate my account… up until the point where folks warned me that after a certain period of days, anyone could claim my handle. This caused me to reactivate it, and let the account sit in a dormant state for the last few years. I didn’t want to be Belghast on Twitter anymore, but I most certainly did not want someone else to be either. In truth I would periodically check in to see what was going on over there… only to find that my feed was essentially the same two or three people talking all the time. Maybe I had some hope that things might change… that Elon might pawn the service off on someone else who could turn it around again. I have a lot of good memories from my time spent on the site and the people that I met through it.
There are so many people that are actively important to my life, that I never would have met were it not for that platform. I got into it during the Blog Azeroth/WoW Blogosphere era and just kept branching out and meeting new people. I was introduced to the concept of a “textrovert” the other day, and really I think that is where I live. I am outgoing and engaging… when it is all in text but deeply introverted when it comes to in-person anything. The thing I am probably most known for… Blaugust… never would have probably gotten off the ground or grown to the size it is were it not for Twitter. However, as of last week, I am permanently closing that chapter in my life. It feels like I went “away to college” in 2022 and am now finally moving out. I don’t mourn what the site is today… It has long stopped being something I care about engaging with. I mourn what the site used to be and what it used to mean to my circle of friends.
In January Gamepad.Club will ring in its second anniversary and while we never grew to be a massive server, it is a comfy space to hang out with my friends. I was an early adopter of Mastodon when it came to the concept of Twitter Exodus, first finding my way there back in 2018 and keeping a relatively active presence there on one server or another ever since. The thing is… Mastodon requires too much effort for most folks. It is not a direct plug-and-play replacement for Twitter. It has its own culture that I greatly appreciate, but not everyone does. It is a delightful place of weirdos and anarchists… and I love it with all of my heart. If you asked me where my home on the internet is, it would be Gamepad and the group of friends I have made on the Fediverse. However, it was about a year into the first major Twitter Exodus that I realized that Mastodon would probably never be that for many of my friends.
Thankfully however there is another option that is pretty much a direct replacement for Twitter, called BlueSky. While it does not feel as comfy to me personally as Gamepad does, it is still a place I enjoy visiting. I’ve had a presence on the site for a while now, and was user number 159,880 from June 26th 2023 according to some promo thing they ran when they hit 10 million users. All of the folks who seemed to bounce immediately from Mastodon/Fediverse have seemed to find their home there. Over the last few weeks, there has been another mass migration away from Twitter and it is even feeling more lively. While I don’t necessarily agree with their stance on decentralization, and prefer the activitypub federation model, it is far better than anything Twitter has ever been.
The thing that I legitimately enjoy about BlueSky is that they are evolving the format with some really cool ideas. Probably my favorite thing about the platform is feeds, which is essentially a community-supported way of sharing a filtered collection of posts based around a specific theme. At its core, it is just a regex search, but it allows you to package it in a way as to share it and let other people use it. When I started on the platform there were not a lot of game-specific feeds so I took up the mantle of supporting several of them, and then roll a new one any time I find a game that I am interested in that does not already have a feed. For example, I have one for Guild Wars 2, Path of Exile, Last Epoch, Wayfinder, and created one in support of Blaugust this year. This functionality is there to allow you to connect up with folks that share your interests, without having to know a bunch of account names.
In a similar vein, Bluesky has added a concept called a “Starter Pack” which allows you to create a list of users that you feel like people might want to follow. Think of the concept of Follow Fridays… but actually supported with systems around it. You can find your way to a friend’s starter pack and with a single button press follow all of the people on it. I am contemplating rolling a few of these… namely one for the AggroChat hosts attached to my AggroChat account, and maybe one for Blaugust members to make it easier to connect up with folks who participate in that event. Most people are using them as a way of creating an easy-to-use list of people that they think are cool or that others should follow. One of my acquaintances created one that curates folks who either currently work on Guild Wars 2 or have worked on it in the past.
Leaving Twitter at least spiritually over two years ago… was one of the best decisions that I have ever made. I could see the downhill slide that the platform was going through, and it seemed as though that only escalated after I was out the door. Essentially it is always the right time to leave Twitter. I had reached a point where I was okay with the friends I lost by closing that door, knowing that oftentimes I have a habit of finding the same people again later. While I would have loved that comfy home to have been Gamepad, for many it just was too much work to get engaged in that platform. I am booned by the fact that I keep seeing more familiar faces showing up on BlueSky, which in itself makes the platform that much more enjoyable to use. There were many folks I knew that had a public Twitter account and a private twitter account, and I guess in many ways that is how I use the two networks. Mastodon is where I am most myself, and BlueSky is where I put on a more carefully crafted guise.
I hold out hopes that at one day the AT Protocol which BlueSky runs upon and the ActivityPub protocol that Mastodon and the rest of the Fediverse use will be fully integrated. In the meantime however, there is Bridgy which serves as a hacky way of federating an account between the two platforms. For example, if you follow the official Bridgy BlueSky account and my federated Gamepad Account on BlueSky, you will be able to have bi-directional interaction with my posts on the Fediverse. Following the Bridgy account will also then federate out your BlueSky account so that folks can follow you from Mastodon. For example, my BlueSky account shows up as @belghast.com@bsky.brid.gy on the Fediverse. I wish there was a way to connect my ACTUAL Bluesky account to my ACTUAL Mastodon account.. but baby steps. For the time being I am using both, but for slightly different purposes.
Anyway… if you are still hanging on to Twitter I encourage you to cut ties and move on with your life. BlueSky is legitimately a direct replacement and you are probably going to be able to find most of the folks that you used to follow over on Twitter. We are starting to see Brands migrating there as well, which is probably the final sight that it has been crowned the winner. I will keep using the Fediverse and namely Gamepad because I enjoy it the most, but I am more than happy to also hang my hat on BlueSky.
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