Today is the second John Mastodon Day: On this day two years ago a misinformed journalist created the personality of “John Mastodon, the founder of a competing social media company named after himself“ (web.archive.org/web/2022121623…). Users happily accepted the newcomer, turned him into a running gag (boingboing.net/2022/12/18/mast…) and made him patron saint of Mastodon.

We celebrate John Mastodon Day because on this day, John Mastodon made Mastodon visible to the mainstream media. He will protect us as long as he exists.

#JohnMastodon #JohnMastodonDay #Mastodon #OnThisDay

This entry was edited (11 months ago)

Solarbird reshared this.

in reply to Markus Redeker

I'm happy to celebrate with you. However, I think it's also worth noting that the very nature of the confusion exposes just how alien the entire idea of this kind of social media remains to much media and thus to much of the general public.

Of course someone must own it. There must be a guy in charge... and a company, and a plan to scrape data and make money.

It shouldn't be alien because email and webpages still exist, although they have contracted from their initial heterogeneity.

myrmepropagandist reshared this.