Ethan Gates is a user on octodon.social. You can follow them or interact with them if you have an account anywhere in the fediverse. If you don't, you can sign up here.

Back in middle school I was heavily involved in a forum. Ditched that anonymous community for social media once Facebook came along. So far finding Mastodon a fascinating combination of those models

@The_BFOOL YES omg I have no idea what my old password to that was but I logged waaaaayyyy too much time there for a summer. Such a weird thing, too, that such a community emerged out of a book marketing tactic.

@jeffreymoro oh thank god sometimes I'm convinced I hallucinated that whole thing! Such an interesting corner of the Internet I've never seen mentioned. Is it still active??!?

@The_BFOOL ethan, you are hardcore not alone. the URL is still very much live & there looks to be a mildly-trafficked subreddit about it? I'm afraid to log in 1) b/c of it being a Proustian madeleine to middle school that I'm not ready for rn and 2) it might be all fascists? since the internet is a Different Place than it was in 2003.

Ethan Gates @The_BFOOL

@jeffreymoro my gf and I were talking about our AIM screennames the other day and I could not for the life of me remember what mine was but this has just jogged my memory that it was a reference to my NationStates avatar wowowow

Also it is 100% probably fascists, I am remembering exchanges now that middle school me was like whatevs, I'm just here for the role-playing, and in retrospect I'm thinking waaaaaaait a minute

@The_BFOOL yeah this sentence from the wiki about the novel seems to carry a looooot of subtext in 2017 mastodon.social/media/wRZQ8qUc