Last night I had this interesting sleepy train of thought that the Gen Xers that're hopping on board and taking to Masto like a fish to water is so interesting and how much it tracks. The generation of latchkey kids that basically raised themselves and thusly have this innate distrust of authorities and established systems and infrastructure. A lot of the tech industry is full of them 'working for the man' (after their dreams of Hackers and any sense of agency had been squashed 1/?
by everyone yelling at how they needed to sell out and get real jobs with corporate) and they've been quiet and considered 'the forgotten generation' for so long and it's like now finally decentralization and independent communities are coming back onto the scene and they're all coming out of the woodwork to be like "YAAAAAAAS" 2/3
They're in their 40s & 50s and they've been working for tech companies for decades and they have the expertise and money to host mastodon servers and run independent instances to help fuel this launch into rebelling against the corporate autocracy we see on the internet and *they are going for it* 3/3