@malena I've been wanting the #fediverse place to succeed for years 5 years prior to the twitter migration. My biggest driver was I was sick and tired of the evil that for-profit social media produces. #Zuck alone is responsible for the rise of 5 fascist leaders and 2 genocides. I was tired of them creating something based on community and connections and once they went public, killing all those things and slowly replacing it with showing ads and content in your face and making it impossible to see anything people you actually followed had to say. The people I follow and interact with now are the same as #myspace and #facebook before they went public, a league of extraordinary nobodies with genuine posts and not one's being as cheap, vapid and shallow as they have to be to appease the now non-existent algorithm to get famous or have "cred". Everyone is being their genuine awkward selves here. No one is hyper polished to the point of faking it. That creates vulnerability that makes real community thrive

@malena Not to mention, when people package themselves like that, people only see ones best, often fake or aspirational self. They translate that as real and then compare themselves to those fake people's success and happiness leading to or compounding depression. Just like how all models are airbrushed so the beauty standard set is unachievable by literally anyone, curated social media does the same for your entire life.