@shengokai@zirk.us

Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 47mo ago

Replying to

"Build your own instance," in essence, is a refusal to consider the possibility that we'd like to be our whole selves in community with others, rather than having to build our own walled gardens. On this view, it becomes a doubling down on the unacceptability for certain people to be authentically themselves within a digital social space.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 46mo ago

I hope we're all prepared for yet another wave of discourse about the ways in which the cultural norms of mastodon do and do not enable some users to be their full selves on this platform.

I'm treating this as a kind of inevitability because it is clear that the broader Fediverse has not learned from the previous wave or the waves that preceded it. And this is in spite of claims from some mastodonians that an influx of users will bring change.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 47mo ago

Replying to

I have written some what at length about why "build your own instance" is not an ideal solution for many communities; however, I would like to put all of that aside to make clear a point I thought was too simple to be mentioned. The entire point of the critique is because we wish to exist in the same space as others as our full selves, and not some sanitized version limited by norms of conduct.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 40mo ago

My first post in a while? Literally something I'm taking from BlueSky.

I'm going to start calling ChatGPT spicy autocomplete.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 47mo ago

Replying to

Now, I know that many folks On Here will ask for a solution to this issue and I actually have one. Like many solutions in my area of expertise, it is not a technical solution but it may be just as hard. Ask yourself why "build your own instance" is your first response to someone who points out that they find it to be their full selves in a given space. Ask yourself why your suggestion is for them to leave? As yourself what that accomplishes. Then get back to me.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 44mo ago

Replying to

To put it simply, the community I have on twitter is not the community I have here, and I like the community I have there. I like the people I have there, and none of this is easily replaceable or can be duplicated here. Moreover, many of these communities are ones that have sustained me at various points in my life and I see no reason to give them up. Not for moral reasons, not for Teflon Mask, not for nothing.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 47mo ago

Replying to

To be clear, whether mastodonians intend to reinforce this perspective is immaterial: the suggestion has the practical and affective force of telling those of us who level critiques that the fediverse will not shift its norms to enable a plurality of ways of being. As a result, we might as well pack it in because our full selves are not welcome in community with others.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 47mo ago

Replying to

I have resisted making plain this meaning because, to me, it seemed too harsh. I wanted to give mastodonians the benefit of the doubt. However, as a great thinker once said "when someone shows you who they are, believe them." And one of the things that "build your own instance" shows me is the degree to which mastodonians are willing to tolerate some people in their social spaces.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 45mo ago

Replying to

Which, if we're being philosophical for a moment, I'm trying to do by pointing out the kind of environment that makes possible a BLM, an environment that is not the fediverse. To this end, pointing out the obstacles to existing kinds of activism should be taken as a starting point for how we might do things differently, not a demand for doing things in the same way. You need to know the contours of a space if you're going to move through it.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 45mo ago

Replying to

Now, there's a good reason why I keep raising these issues, and it is not just because my mentions remain flooded with folks arguing about points I've made: it's because raising these issues forms what Sara Ahmed calls a "willfulness archive." If you're humanities averse (or philosophy averse) you can leave this thread. For the rest of you, a willfulness archive is an archive of the ways that people have willfully resisted the "flow" of a space, the way things are "supposed to" go in a space.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 44mo ago

Replying to

Which gets me to one of the things that bugs me about this question, or being asked this question, as if it is a question without a context: it ignores that there might be very good reasons to stick around. Moreover, it seems to assume that everyone's experience of the badness (or Teflon Mask's badness) is the same, that our tolerance for that badness is the same, that there may not be very good reasons to tolerate that badness.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 45mo ago

Replying to

Willfulness is important because if we stop being willful, stop having the conversations of two months ago because people aren't having the conversations of two months ago even though these conversations were never resolved, then we simply allow the issues to be covered over. Nothing in my scholarship says that this is a live option. And, insofar as people are seriously considering the technical and social implications of what I'm saying, I'd say that I should keep having this conversation.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 45mo ago

Replying to

To this end, my "having the arguments of two months ago" is a way of pointing out how these arguments are never really settled. In fact, I would say that I'm having the arguments of two years ago insofar as I am literally building upon the arguments made by users of color who were here long before my arrival, and it is their willfulness archive that I draw upon two make my own arguments. This is important because "not being over what is over" is one of the ways marginalized folks are willful.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 45mo ago

I absolutely think movements could use the Fediverse's technical properties to achieve similar visibility, albeit very slowly. The social properties might be much harder given the differing social conventions about how to use the technical properties and the continuity of the fediverse with tech spaces which aren't the most activist friendly.

@slothrop@chaos.social

chaos.social

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 44mo ago

@Wolven@ourislandgeorgia.net @rysiek@mstdn.social @bremner@mathstodon.xyz @Studio_Gal@mastodon.social @enkiv2@eldritch.cafe

I did literally write a paper on this.

https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cepe_proceedings/vol2019/iss1/14/

I think it's buried somewhere in the back. That said, no one wants to pay me to run this as a research project.

(Probably because they know I'm right.)

digitalcommons.odu.edu

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 44mo ago

I'm not sure this is entirely the case. It could be that the people who stick around don't have the option to leave.

Maybe it is the case that the people who left might not miss the people who stay, or have the privilege to leave without consequence.

@robs@aus.social

aus.social

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 45mo ago

Replying to

In fact, Ahmed posted the introduction to Willful Subjects to Scribd for people to read. https://www.scribd.com/document/234995949/Willful-Subjects-by-Sara-Ahmed

scribd.com

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 44mo ago

@Are0h@ubiqueros.com Exactly this. Definitely.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 44mo ago

@chrisaldrich@mastodon.social
So, the class was cancelled due to low enrollment and the syllabus is jut sitting on my desktop gathering dust and the like.

I suppose I can post it.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 45mo ago

@ArtistMarciaX@mastodon.art I know EXACTLY where this was taken and what bookstore is being reflected there!

I spent way too much time on that street in my youth.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 44mo ago

@oblomov@sociale.network @blaine@mastodon.social @bobwyman@mastodon.social @atomicpoet@mastodon.social

It's not the case that the backend should define the content, but that the backend structures the ways in which we can (and should, given that design itself is moral) access the content.

The kinds of filtering choices that we -have- are at issue here, and how those filtering choices shape what kinds of communities, what kinds of circles emerge through our interactions with one another through the platform.

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Dr. Johnathan Flowers @shengokai@zirk.us

· 45mo ago

@ArtistMarciaX@mastodon.art We definitely might have been. I'd recognize that theater anywhere.

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