and don’t say algorithms. the general public constantly laments about how algorithms have ruined everything.

Right, right. Much the same way the American public complains that fast food has ruined their health and yet 2/3 of the nation is overweight. Or how chain smokers know full well their lungs are fucked six ways to Sunday but they keep reaching for those nicotine hits. It’s almost like people say they hate the things they continue to reach for all the time. Funny, that.

Do I think the Fedi is reasonably within the grasp of understanding for most of the general public? Sure. But do I think anything on the Fedi stands a ghost of a chance in competition against centralized services that cater to the dopamine rush people are already conditioned to expect and continue to reach for even when several of them claim to hate it? Oh fuck no, absolutely not.

In all likelihood that experience will be temporary, in one of two ways. Either Lemmy becomes mainstream enough to enshittify beyond your tolerance, or Lemmy atrophies into obscurity and ceases being a platform with any benefit.

Which will happen, and on what timescale it will happen? Who knows. But I wager one of those outcomes is inevitable before too long. The “chill, somewhat unknown but appreciably active platform” position is long-term an unstable one.

Until then, we’re all just in time to bask in the warm glow of this little experiment for at least a little while.

I’d call it a damped spring oscillation. Still goes up and down, but the extremes peter out with time.

It’s basically a power strip:

but specifically for cables that carry Internet traffic instead of electrical power.

A more direct analogy would be a telephone switchboard (which is why it is called a “switch”), basically a computerized version of those old-timey operator ladies who used to sit in a room waiting for you to make a phone call, and they’d physically move a plug connected to your phone and plug it directly into the phone line of whoever you were trying to call. That, but for computers trying to talk to one another over network cables instead of making telephone calls.