I needed to adjust myself to fit in

I said I avoid talking about myself in my blog but this time I thought I have to (and I feel a little anxious about it).

When I did concern myself with the smolnet idea in 2021 beginning with the Gemini protocol, I was very intrigued by the technical aspects of minimalism and simple principles. The big web is a mess of BigTech conglomerates which try to squeeze every bit of information out of the user and an ongoing process of 'enshittification'. I like the idea of a small and slow web. The IndyWeb movement is very promising. Local small sites from the people for the people. So I built up a gemini capsule to begin with. I wanted to be part of the movement of taking back the web.

Unfortunately I'm not really a peoples person IRL and I don't know many people. In german we would say that I'm no "Mann von Welt". There are many things I don't know about (although I'm able to learn and form an opinion!) and I had to learn a lot about the whole smolnet culture. The first thing was that I was relatively conservative in my political views in the past.

But now I was thrown into a world which was full of tabletop roleplayers (which I never got into except some video games), communists, liberals, LGBTQ+ people, climate activists, anarchists, "wokeness" and a lot of ideas, which I've heard of but never took serious. It was not quite a culture clash but I had some stubborn prejudices to deal with myself. In fact I still have some opinions which may not be the most popular in this culture. But think I mostly got over it. Especially because I want to be a part of it.

And the reality is that this VERY diverse culture is the *main* culture of the smolnet and especially fedi. There are some conservative voices but they are a minority (which maybe isn't too bad to see all sides). I always felt it to be difficult to cope with so many very different individuals. For example I didn't like kids up until around 22. They are loud and rebellious. But I'm willing to learn and can hopefully get used to their behavior. And they are important because they grew up in this BigTech world and know their inherent problems from day one.

I had to get used to all these new forms of existence and ideas and it's an ongoing process. And I was born in the '70s so I'm maybe a little rusty but I *want* to change. And I hope that I'm welcome despite my past.

If you want to talk to me or discuss some aspects of this statement, you can always write an email or contact me via Mastodon/ActivityPub. I'm always happy for feedback.

All in all - Have fun!

-fab-

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