[merlish]

Sure, and these are good points, but they solve a problem far less interesting than the real problem.

Of the (let's guess) 60 people telling Wil to go do one, up to about half[1] might be the shitposting crew taking advantage to troll a not well-liked celebrity, but the rest were people and their friends who were genuinely incensed at his appearance in their graph.

For the latter, you might argue they should block him, but if he's on the same instance then effectively he's come in and sat down in their home. If he's on a remote instance, then there still exists the desire for retributive justice for past wrongs (yes, including perceived).

In this specific case, there was no-one (except the moderator!) sticking up for Wil. The groups that dislike him are small, but genuinely plural. (e.g. 4chan doesn't like him, a number of trans* artists don't like him, some Star Trek geeks...)

Given that he came to the fediverse to escape harassment and trolling on _mainstream_ platforms, I don't think there is a great solution.

So here's two options, instead:

One: Don't join the platform as "Wil Wheaton". If you want to join a community as another face in the crowd, then use an internet handle. Then you can interact as equals.

Pseudonymity is one of the great gifts of the internet.

If you come as a celebrity to link your blog posts and try and talk to fans, then I don't think the fediverse makes any sense. It's too small and people are territorial of the instances they adopt.

Secondly - a more social solution - find some way to calm the people involved. This may involve temporarily suspending instance links, or saying that (as moderator) you need time to discuss this and are working towards an acceptable solution, etc. Don't know what you do next.

Finally - and the point of my rant: Dismiss those you don't understand / greatly simplify social problems at your peril. (Sure is great reading a bunch of trans artists arguing in earnest turned into "abusers" - nice!)

As humans, we make great changes and build general solutions based on one-off undesirable acts, and if you don't even make an effort to completely understand the problem then you WILL build the wrong solution.

[1] Possibly more than 50%? There were people involved who kept saying they had just joined Mastodon and didn't know how to use it, which is weird.