“Mastodon for Harris” is a Success Story for Fediverse Activism

The rhetoric of this fundraising was that it would encourage the Harris campaign to have an official presence on mastodon which would legitimize and spread awareness of the fediverse. This has not happened and as far as I can tell the Harris campaign has not even acknowledged that mastodon exists let alone make an account or instance.

This reminds me of an event on reddit which paralleled the pathetic "If I give enough money maybe senpai will notice me" vibes. Back in 2013 some starcraft players got the idea that if they organized to buy enough pizzas from PapaJohn's then it would convince the company to sponsor starcraft tournaments and push esports into the mainstream (esports were niche at this time and starcraft was the major esport).

Here's a post celebrating raising thousands of dollars for a company that materially opposed medicare for all (wasn't kidding about the democrat parallels). What did they get out of this? a vague tweet about esports that didn't even acknowledge the campaign. PapaJohns would go on to sponsor an esports tournament... in 2022 well after esports had become mainstream on it's own and sponsorships like this were tailist rather than pioneering. For extra injury that PapaJohns tournament was for smashbros with the starcraft community that organized this cringe campaign by then long dead and buried.