Dads.cool – Mastodon Instance for Fatherhood
dads.cool
dads.cool
Interesting. I'd never heard of that
For the people who don't understand this: basically, there's a content warning you have to give in this community when you post a picture including a person looking into the camera. The reason is around how autistic people can sometimes feel uncomfortable with eye contact.
In other news, some folks can't handle dad euphemisms like "poop" and "piddle".
The mainstream internet would never even consider the needs of autistic people - both culturally and financially, it's a non-starter. But Mastodon allows communities to cater to those needs - indeed, the initial community was made up of people driven out of the mainstream web by its hostility and lack of empathy towards "abnormal" people.
But, unlike say Twitter, a centralized platform where the man in charge can just decide to redpill the whole site and there's nothing anyone can do about it, no one is forcing all instances to conform to any particular set of rules. Allowing instances to form their own rules and federate with like-minded instances is a strength, not a weakness.
I mean, I'm sure there are a lot of fathers of autistic children, and autistic fathers, who might appreciate this. It doesn't have to be for you.
But realistically, this is just lowkey antiwoke politics rearing its ugly head. No one mentioned "liberalism" but you had to throw it in twice, likely because in your head any form of affordance is part of an exclusionary political agenda. Yet I guarantee there are conservatives who would value this feature, and that most people wouldn't care that much.
Technically correct, but https://dads.cool/about - the page which we are discussing - makes its political alignment clear. They feel the need to explicitly state that they will not federate with right-wing lunatics (Gab); but left-wing lunatics and tankies are apparently welcome.
> dads.cool implements the open source "BLOCKchain" to block interactions with instances that might put our community at risk
Earlier they describe the kind of community they are:
> dads.cool is an instance for dads; if you apply to become a user, it’s expected that you have, had, or are expecting, at least one (human) child—sorry, but pets are not children, no matter how much we love them. Being a father does not mean identifying or being labeled as a man, nor does it mean that you were involved in the conception of the child you take care of. Foster dads, adoptive dads—anyone who cares for a child and identifies as a dad is welcome here. In that spirit, dads.cool welcomes all sexualities, gender identities, races, levels of mobility, and ages.
Now, can you honestly say that left-wing lunatics will put their community at a similar risk as right-wing lunatics? One side is clearly and deliberately not accepting of parts of this community.
A few years ago the term “BIPOC” was the preferred woke term. Now we are in a stage where some people prefer it and some people don’t. And by “don’t prefer it” I mean they will call you a racist colonizer for using it.
Social media is supposed to be fun. I as a user can’t and don’t want to imagine every possible way someone might be offended or triggered or excluded by everything I post. It’s upsetting to imagine something as simple as posting a picture with eye contact could be seen as intentionally causing harm.
I’ll just post elsewhere where I know people won’t be offended. Like a Discord or Matrix instance of my friends.
These Mastodon posts are going to be more content warnings than content if the current trends continue.
> no one mentioned “liberalism”
These ideas (and Mastodon itself) are heavily associated with progressive politics. Although I do think you are correct (in a horseshoe theory sense) that some conservatives would value the feature.
This one's new to me. Can you fill me in?
I clicked in the first place because I was interested to see a parenting forum (as a parent) but as it is it's pretty exclusionary.
It doesn't. People tend to be respectful, and the whole idea is to be more inclusive. The fact that you immediately take a "fuck off don't tell me what to do" attitude is telling.
>But as it is it's pretty exclusionary
On the contrary, it's being inclusionary (in this instance to people with ASD, and you're not comfortable with it.
I'm assuming if you had some usernames that you could stick at the end of that URL, you could see their public posts, too.