Instead of visiting the Mall of America and shopping at only what the mall will offer, using outdated infrastructure-- you can instead visit a variety of towns (“instances”) which each host their own cute boutiques (“communities”) specializing in a particular sort of item (whatever the topic of the community is). The instances can have their own rules that apply to its communities, but communities can also make their own rules, like a shop can. Skip the crowds and barely functional Supermall experience and find a better place to engage in discussion and get information.

He seems so obsessed with how people receive him that he’s probably already here somewhere to keep tabs on it. At the very least I like to imagine him paying some assistant to do such for him.

Me, trying to remember which is playBOY and which is playGIRL: 🤔

Sure thing. I was quite young, but I think it was multiple occurrences, none of them scary so I thought not too much of it.

I was often in our kitchen from which extended a hallway, my room was on the hallway left. It was a very small house, so every room was off the hallway lol. I often would be sitting at the table eating, at the end of the table. I would have my back-left side to the hallway, and my mother would always complain about unnecessary lights being on, so the hallway lights would be off although the kitchen lights on, and brought enough to light half the hallway. See the attached image. I’m making a better version now, but this shittier version will help with the layout for now. Lol.

Anyway, I would see this Dick Tracy type man watching me as I would eat or whatever, just inside the hallway and out of view of the others. I distinctly remember thinking, “Oh, he looks a bit of Dick Tracy.” Which was strange, as I never saw a movie about him. Just felt like the right words. Now, I can say–Same coat. Same hat. Always just a shadow person. NEVER the evil red or white eyes reported by some others. No eyes whatsoever. Never aggressive. Never intimidating. Just… unsettling and cold to realize one is watching you… I do believe it to be the same entity multiple times. I was never sleep-- although as a funny side story, I once left some laundry in a pile in my bed when I was young and lazy, and when I woke up and looked at it, I thought it was Abraham Lincoln shaped in my sleepy state and got scared haha.

This happened occasionally until I aged. Fast forward to just this year, and someone I know on Mastodon posted about it. I watched a video, was shocked. I thought it was something my child brain had imagined. I’m not sure I even believe in ghosties. I’m agnostic. I couldn’t even have an imaginary friend because it made me feel silly like I was obviously making it up and trying to fool myself (later this has been my experience with org. religion as well).

As I mentioned, hard to say it’s not a weird… Shared pareidolic experience due to the nature of the human brain. Or maybe he’s a System Admin making sure my code isn’t buggy in the simulation we live in (why not?). But it fills me with wild curiosity that I’ve experienced such a weird phenomenon. I’ve never “seen a ghost” otherwise.

Regardless of the cause… It’s fun to tell my new parent friends to ask their children if they’ve seen a hat man…

The Hatman. Weird phenomenon, cannot explain it outside of generic “pareidolia” approach, but definitely remember it to this day. That said, I never saw him when asleep like many/most. I was usually awake.

The parents which hit us? 🤔

(That said, no physical attacks should be allowed without permission)

I think he’s just making it clear that only those with many, many users matter to him, because individuals generate little value for him. He probably only counted the most popular subreddits as worth noticing.

I hope they do stay there. I don’t want their drivel here. 🤷 If the main thing on their mind is being angry with the blackout, I can only imagine the content they would contribute to their communities anyway. 😵‍💫

Maybe I’m petty and reckless but I’d love to see more sabotage on the way out 😬. Make everyone want to avoid reddit even as casual lurkers without accounts. 👹

How do I think this ends? I think it won’t matter to their bottom line. Although I am happy with the participation thusfar, Reddit benefits not only from the current use, but the redirection from every Google search toward Reddit. Unless moderators deleted the content before they leave (idk if even possible), the impact is but a blink in a profit report. And the CEO will use their stability as a personal reinforcement.

That said, good riddance, I don’t want those willing to stay to be a part of communities I’m in anyway. So far the new life here on Lemmy seems to be very cooperative and positive-- I hope this is maintained.

A lot of the communities only seem to have like 50 subscribers. I know a lot of people are exploring options other than Reddit, so I’m confused where everyone is at.

Or maybe I just have weird taste. I am not so interested in shitposting, memes, politics, news; this may be where where everyone is? I’ll give it time to see who trickles in. I like the forum/discussion board style of this as opposed to Mastodon, which is obviously more timeline/feed based, but can feel like a random assortment of things.

On the other hand, since many of the communities are empty, I either do not have interesting topics to yet follow, or am not quite sure where I feel comfortable posting. Somewhat opposite ends of the spectrum, but okay that there is differentiation. Would like to see the fediverse group together (Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, whatever else believes in this approach), as alone there may not be power, but together, maybe something impressive can be made.

Imperial theme looming in the background…