"and critically, I have other ways to connect to the people i can't reach from here - so who cares?" —@noracodes
because maintaining additional nodes is overhead. i'm glad you don't find it troublesome but it fucking sucks and is exhausting and a lot of people are already fucking tired of having watched their extended friend groups tear themselves apart over petty infighting over and over again. for many of us, forging even one new connection involves deliberately setting an established body of reasons to mistrust anyone and everyone, precisely because it is impossible to tell whether anyone else will use their fucking brain to evaluate a situation or simply turn at another's command. i do not wish to have to forge my autonomy by force, because actually being at war with the world in this way, to the degree which i have been before, is extremely tiresome. instead, i wish to have my ability to make decisions respected inherently to some degree, and that means something more than simply "taking my thoughts into consideration".
the rest of it
and choices like fediblocking are hardly an easy-to-notice phenomenon from the user perspective, unless all administrations involved are deliberately transparent about declaring their lists and have zero omissions. as far as i can tell, that is not necessarily the case, partly due to human nature, and also none actually include an annotated reason for each decision (best I have seen was about ~50%). it is also an extremely weighty hammer as it passes judgement not just on the actions which sparked the decision but on everyone also on that instance. it is a perfectly reasonable tool to use when the problem is e.g. an instance genuinely does exist to do nothing but spam or harass people or there is some other equally pressing concern, but it is a tool being deployed for much lower-intensity conflicts. not even ones that are a dead-giveaway that there will definitely be such a concern in the future.no, it is a tool being demanded for much lower-intensity conflicts. "you must follow our rules because of a 2nd-degree association, and so even though we control routing to/from our instance, you must now exercise your routing according to our rules or we will cease routing to you." this does not respect the sovereignty of any of the instances involved, not even the one demanding this dissociation. if this 2nd-order association concern is truly such a dealbreaker, then it should simply be declared and then executed on without further ado. instead we see both demand and petulant whining when people decline to simply cave to those demands.
sovereignty. autonomy. choice. i wish to interact with others that i wish to experience and i wish for others who wish to experience me to interact with me. i want connection. and i want tools that make those kinds of connections easier, yes, and sometimes that does mean moderation by someone in a position of trust, but i do not need a "community" from it. once upon a time, my "community" was effectively nothing but the set of rules and authorities who collectively decided how much violence i would experience that day, and the other people who suffered alongside me. this is not poetry or a metaphor for 21st Century Capitalism this was my cold reality and i have not once forgotten it.
so "community" is largely an empty word to me. it's almost as much of a riot as "individual". both have little to do with the actual process of autonomy. i strive against their vacuosity by trying to bring my own light to this benighted world. i prefer to value verbs more than nouns, even if the nouns give them context. this is because, while i hold little faith in abstractions like "community" which are underpinned by nothing, i do believe in actions and their power. gifting (things). questioning (ideas). explaining (patterns). showing (kindness).
but... trusting (anyone) only rarely.
and sometimes raging is all i have left.
i did once run my own "community", exerting the steering control over everything. perhaps in the end i will do something like that again if i manage to heal from the persistent wounds that i accumulated doing that in the first place (all for nothing). but i became truly tired of dealing with other people's pettiness while also trying to respect them, and that respect is table stakes for occupying such a position of trust.
yet i am also tired of being the person who, on their own, initiates so many interactions, that always seems to be welcome yet none seek out, that must stand there, bright and strong and cold and alone. "other ways"... yes, everyone has "other ways" to talk to people.
We are tired of being most skillful in those other ways.
We are tired of millions of such "trivial inconveniences".
We are tired of suffocating under other people's triviality piling high.
If you find meaningful connection easy... good.
It is not so for all.
Some of us are cold, even on this burning world.
