I guess it's time to move on.
Song of the moment - of some of the most important "moving on" moments of my life, including this one: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=KupQNkpKoV0&si=zEj8A2xgrXpwjt6O
What does this even mean?
This post is an announcement. It announces that I am removing myself from the community of OMG.lol, as I was perceived as a hostile element and I don't see any other way out of this mess that is congruent with my values. I don't want to cause harm (and I feel like I have) but I also don't want to feel like everything I say (especially negative and critical things, which might want to be said, too, at times...) might be considered part of a hostile pattern towards someone (but I feel like it exists, if independently from my own intentions).
It'll be somewhat of a slow burn. Effective immediately, I'll stop participating in the chat community of OMG.lol. Soon, I'll build my own landing page for https://martin-haehnel.de/. The biggest worry is where I move my Mastodon address to (social.lol is part of OMG.lol's offering), but since I still have more than 10 years of paid service with OMG.lol, I'll take a look around what else is out there and move as soon as I have found a new haven.
The little semi-private productivity and accountability forum didyoudoit is also impacted, as it originated from that community. I am sad to say: I see no way to keep the lights on over there. I had originally said didyoudoit would stick around until the week of 17 March 2026, but I do not think this is the right thing to do anymore. It had become somewhat of an empty bar in recent weeks, anyway. So this is what is going to happen: The forum will stay up until said date (so you have ample time to copy or delete any of your old posts), but I am not going to post new threads anymore. After 2026-03-22 the forum and all its data will be deleted.
Just to make this abundantly clear: OMG.lol's community is great and the values of its members as well as its staff are commendable. This is not about their values being wrong, if anything their integrity and humanity is an inspiration to me. This is about perceptions and limitations of communication through the internet and the way in which us humans tend to see patterns in behavior and seem to even be able to validate them. If there are no behaviors (or at least no behaviors within a certain space) to make patterns out of, the incidental harm should be mostly nullified.
