I don't mean this title as a comparison, but as an antagonistic relationship...

I've been off-and-on in the fediverse for longer than Mastodon has existed, I've followed the building of the fediverse since before ActivityPub ever existed.

I still consider it a blessing the explosive growth that happened within the fediverse... but I'm honestly sickened by the Mastodon effect of it...

So many of the new people hopped on Mastodon and thought that fediverse is just another name for Mastodon... some people even got so far as thinking fediverse is just another name for ActivityPub...

And people came with so many flawed views of what they think the fediverse is as well as completely unrealistic ideas of what it should be.

So many people see it as this miracle pill against all the evils of corporate social servers like Twitter, fixing every single problem that's ever existed in those communities.

... Those people are completely delusional... but they're loud and violent.

They get pissed off any time they run into the actual fediverse... they get pissed off when they realize there's platforms other than Mastodon that don't even remotely behave like Mastodon or especially their imaginary version of Mastodon.

And frankly... I'm getting pissed off at the entitlement of these people.

They think the fediverse is all about their consent on who can see their posts... this is like going to a waterpark and complaining that you didn't consent to getting wet... you went to a waterpark! When you post on the fediverse, you have consented... if you don't consent then you don't post to the fediverse. Reminds me of the annoying cycles of people sharing blocks of vaguely legal looking text to Facebook to try and override the TOS, thinking they can just say "I don't consent to the TOS" to get out of it when you explicitly consented by joining and you revoke that consent by leaving.

They think this is the place for private insular communities... because they walked into an empty park and thought "this public space is mine and will never have crowds of people wandering through". They get pissed at the idea of Meta joining the fediverse with Threads because it means there might be actually be a crowd walking through this public space...

They fuss about community as if their little tiny corner of the fediverse is the whole thing. They mistake their standards and agreements as those for the whole fediverse.

And worst of all these people will actively harass someone over expanding the federation of the fediverse in a way that's not only normal, but part of the specific design of how this place works... especially as these people are so damn clueless they think this is a single instance they can just tear down with pitchforks as opposed to just the one that briefly crossed their attention.

People who want to actively destroy the fediverse by isolating it, breaking it, and otherwise trying to "control" it can get bent.