A few hours ago, I unsubscribed from micro.blog and put my account into a quasi-disabled state, kept it from deleting so far only because I have no idea how to prevent dangling links ending into nowhere. Have been thinking about that heavily, the last days. Wondered whether I'm too harsh on that, on the micro.blog crew, specifically on Manton here. And then re-read this, several times. Read through some of the follow-ups by Manton Reece. And decided to trust my feeling and my guts. Arguably, Manton has done a lot to push forth the current IndieWeb movement. He has, technically, grown micro.blog in an interesting and great platform. He has, whenever I had to interact with him up there, always shown to be kind and helpful. And micro.blog isn't X, he isn't Musk. He has more sides to himself than this one. But, too, he's (just like me, at this point) close-to-maximum privileged, being a middle-aged white tech dude devoid of being directly affected by certain problems. micro.blog claims in his community guidelines to be a safe space for everyone. But at the moment, in the threads and conversations surrounding last weeks controversy, in the statements by Manton on that very issue, it feels awfully close to how one of my oldest and most inspiring micro.blog contacts did put it (in a personal message, hence no attribution): If it's not Mantons problem, it's not a relevant priority. This is how omg.lol handled communication on that topic. micro.blog is not X. There are certain community rules, there are some expectations tied to it, and these expectations haven't recently been met at least to me. At all. Maybe at some point this changes, again. Maybe at some point there's clarification on that, maybe there's a more elaborate reflection of the whole topic in the future, maybe the idea of pushing this controversy in public without seeking a personal exchange early on was outright stupid. But maybe, too, at my very heart I'm disappointed by Manton essentially putting himself at the center of this, as someone to communicate, as someone to be hurt, as someone trying to defend himself - rather than even just once asking questions, asking what others, in the current situation, might need around to feel safe out there and on his platform. It feels sad to leave there, it feels sad to do so without trying to resolve that issue, and maybe I'm way too irrelevant, taking myself way too seriously by even thinking about it for that long. Maybe I'm about to delete this very post at some point, but for the moment it feels ... right. Sorry for flooding your timeline with it.