People have been earning a living from social life as long as social life has existed. How else do you explain Oscar Wilde? But Mastodon, or the fediverse, or w

People have been earning a living from social life as long as social life has existed. How else do you explain Oscar Wilde? But Mastodon, or the fediverse, or whatever we choose to call it, is pretty clearly past its peak, and absent a significant change in its fortunes looks to continue its slow slide into - well, further into irrelevance. I do think that's a pity; I've been banging a drum about the hazards, moral and otherwise, of monolithic social media for what by now must be most of a decade, and I would like there to be an alternative that achieves traction without being beholden to the profit motive which in my analysis lies at the root of all those hazards. Mastodon had a real shot at that, and it was a fun place to be for a while there, besides. I hate to see it fail, but I'd be a fool not to acknowledge the plainly obvious fact that it is failing, at this point an also-ran at best, and unlikely to change that trajectory.