Eternal September is when influx from some other (often shittier and collapsing) platform overwhelms the unique culture that existed before, and in time fully replaces it. Destroying what existed before.
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For example, I introduced 2 hashtags for awareness:
- #AvoidEternalSeptember Raise attention to the culture clash.
- #DonateToFediInstances Help admins and moderators withstand the influx and give them your support.
We want to be gentle, welcoming to newcomers. Show them around. But also keep having the nice chattering and culture we had before, and maybe give those some extra boosts to exemplify and spread the vibes.
Here’s a poll to make newcomers aware that taking Twitter culture with you on the Fediverse is just weird.
On Lemmy we have the issue of entire groups of people being kicked off Reddit and causing havoc here, but this Twitter exodus is a bit different with people choosing to switch.
I don’t think there is much of a general “Twitter culture” taking over like what you have when a mass exodus of a specific banned sub-reddit dumps their shit here, so I am cautiously optimistic regarding this Twitter exodus.
But the OP is also wrong about the original Eternal September: It wasn’t that people switched platforms, but rather that mainstream culture started to flood what was previously a small niche network. This effect is much more diffuse and can go multiple ways as “mainstream” culture is a very broad definition and has become even more diffuse in recent decades.
Indeed, I was less interested in the historical event and, so I generalized the concept.
Right now, not only is there somewhat of a culture clash, but a vanguard of CEO’s, CTO’s and high profile Silicon Value (laid-off?) workers streaming in.
Birdsite has a couple’a hundred million users. But the influx is potentially much, much bigger and continues going, as - due to all media attention worldwide - Mastodon and by extension the Fediverse becomes a household name.
I am not only fretting about an Eternal September to take place, but increasingly more expecting it to happen. And with the inevitable corporate takeover following in its strides.
Yes, I get your concern, but the Fediverse already has large corporate instances (in Japan) and I don’t think that has been much of an issue so far. As long as they don’t start trying to monopolize the network like Google did with Email and XMPP, it is probably good to have some of these.