I remember the first wave of Mastodon popularity and hype, when everyone predicted that everyone would abandon Twitter for the Fediverse. It didn’t happen.

Then the original news of Musk broke that he was buying Twitter.

Mastodon was back in the news again.

Note: I probably have missed many beats in this timeline.

This probably renewed my interest in Mastodon passively. “Oh yeah, I have that account” but I also tend to have multiple accounts by topic, on at least certain social networks.

This time, it seemed to stick a bit more with people and proclaimed exoduses.

I was sticking with it. I had my long standing tw2113 Twitter account, my uanmovies Twitter account now for my attempts at being a slightly serious movie blogger, but not really.

Then………………..X

It soon dawned on me that Musk has been obsessed with “X” as a brand for over 20 years. Apparently he bought x.com for $1mil and change back in the day, and he’s been trying to make it a thing ever since.

Now, with the Twitter purchase, he’s also converting everything to “X” in the site. I think what set me off finally is the rebrand away from what I’ll call Twitter blue and the bird branding, to this ugly X.

So, I started moving away. First up was my often forgotten achoosneezed account, which lately had just been auto-posting my book reading status updates. I unfollowed everyone, I requested my archive, and I deleted my account.

Next was uanmovies. This was slightly easier because I have been lazy since December and have yet to post since. However, I did try to find who I could find that I followed from that account, on both Mastodon, but more specifically Bluesky, which is from former Twitter people. I wasn’t able to find everyone, but I found a good amount. I didn’t give uanmovies their own account, I’m just blending in with my tw2113 handle. I requested my archive and I deleted my account

Lastly, is my tw2113 Twitter handle. This one I spent the most effort trying to find people, and since it was also largely my web development account, most of my re-follows came from Mastodon instances, but some were also Bluesky. I have not yet requested my archive and may not delete my account. This last detail is because while I don’t know how many people will be following me for how long, but I can at least retweet content from my employer still, to whoever may be listening.

So yes, I’m on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/tw2113.bsky.social

Mastodon web dev focused: @tw2113@phpc.social

Mastodon general-ish focused: @tw2113@mastodon.world

Mastodon indieweb-focused: @tw2113@indieweb.social

Mastodon writer? focused: @tw2113@writing.exchange

I still have too many accounts.

Muppet Christmas Carol will forever hold place in #1 in my heart for “A Christmas Carol” adaptations. The 1951 version, named “Scrooge” is a very strong contender for #2. This is in part because I bonded with my mother over it, specifically from a scene near the end of the movie.

In case you’ve never seen it, it stars Alastair Sim in the titular role of Ebeneezer. Towards the end of the story, for some very odd reason exclusive to this film, the Ebeneezer character does a handstand on a chair and “exposes his nether regions” to his maid. The maid comically has her skirt blown up over her face as she runs off screen, shielding her from the exposure to Ebeneezer that she received.

For whatever reason, this amused my mom, and thus influenced me to be amused as well. I have zero complaints. It’s a good fun moment.

It definitely does NOT hinder the ranking of this version of the story in my overall rankings, and really helps cement it at a solid #2.

That said, I will dare say every rendition of “A Christmas Carol”, even the “worst”, have other movies that are worse than them, and thus deserve to exist.

“A blog was a little patch of land in the internet’s community garden to harvest these opinions” – Joanne McNeil in her book “Lurking”