orthogonal to alive @avi@computerfairi.es

Mastodon instances are still vulnerable to trolls account hopping, but users are at least empowered to block and mute...instead of having to wait around for a problem user to get banned.

Mastodon instances are better than web forums, because if the mods on your instance are assholes, you can go to another instance and still keep in touch with your friends fairly easily.

Whereas jumping ship from a web forum meant losing touch with people or only communicating with them privately from then on.

We have this nostalgia for web forums on here, but my first 5 years online were spent like this:

2 years on a forum being constantly harassed by a guy who would "joke" about raping me, while the mods repeatedly banned him for miscellaneous trolling, only for him to come back in a few days with a new account

Then 3 years on a private forum that slowly became more and more right-wing, with the mods perfectly content with the situation because they were the ones driving it

You just know there's some jerk screaming at the artists, "No! I want a REALISTIC Sonic!" while they beg and plead, no, they can't really make him realistic, he's not real, he's a weird rubberhose creature like Mickey Mouse, except filtered through Japanese culture and repackaged for Americans.

"See?" they said after the first trailer was released. "We told you he would look weird."

"Fine! I still want him to have HAIR!" the executive thunders. "Hedgehogs should be SHAGGY and FLUFFY!"

I guess the main issue is that Sonic's integument is very finely detailed hair and fur, which gives him a texture I don't want to think about. Sonic is probably best when he looks like he is made out of hard matte plastic, like a shell.

If only there were some pre-existing computer generated 3D models that the artists making movie Sonic could use to help them render the hedgehog in an appealing way

We were too damn uncultured to notice Mortal Kombat was referencing avant garde music by naming one of its fighters Johnny Cage

But I'm not exactly stealth. I have my pronouns in everything. It's really a matter of them assuming that no trans men are in tech or...in life.

Or that trans men all present like Buck Angel.

I know at least some of my colleagues think I'm a trans woman, which I guess makes sense because the average person who dresses like me in tech is an egg

Tech is full of "Women and people the cis round up to women" events that I keep getting sent invites to even though I look like Milhouse