TL;DR: The lead dev is German and had no idea at the time that toot was American slang for farting, he thought it was just an elephant/mastodon noise.

But what if the thread is old and someone came across it from google looking for information?

This is exactly why I never pick iphones, because a good chunk of the time you miss out on all the niche things you can do on a smartphone.

Who would believe a story like this?

To a small extent, yes. I kindof felt that when I discovered mastodon 5 years back, but it’s still not quite the same. Back then, the internet was a new adventure. Every website was kindof shitty, but they all had their own unique personalities based on who made them. The internet’s potential was unknown. The fediverse just feels like more of the same bland social media, but everything is messier and hard to find.

I say that, but Lemmy just makes me realize how much I took reddit for granted. Forums are nice, but it was great to have a place where at least 1/5th of the english speaking population congregated to discuss the issues of our time. I don’t think we will get that on the fediverse.

I want to believe in the fediverse, but it REALLY needs to be ironed out and made easier to use.

What we want is our shit in one place, without some asshole controlling what we see. Is that really such an impossible dream?