Announcing termination and archival of yiffit.net in 2025: we will be gone, but hopefully immortalized.

y'know what, I was gonna do this quietly, but I'm drunk, and so this feels like a time to make bad decisions:

When Yiffit closes at the end of this year, it's probably going to be the end of my time on Lemmy. The reasons are varied (it's mostly the tankies) but fundamentally, it boils down to the simple fact that I've realized that I come here not to enjoy myself or relax, but because I want to be angry at something. And boy howdy, does Lemmy give me something to be angry about (the tankies).

I'm gonna level with the rest of this platform. As it stands right now, this platform consists of the following:

• ~60-70%: Reposts of whatever meme is in the vicinity of the front page of /r/all on Reddit

• 15-20%: Politics (including some of the worst takes I've ever seen on the Internet) and memes about the awful takes

• 9-14%: Memes about Linux

• ~1%: Actual original content that interests me

So with all that, why would I stick around here? If the shit I see here is mostly crap reposts from Reddit and shit that I either don't care about or actively dislike, why don't I just... go to Reddit and browse read-only without an account, like I've found myself increasingly doing over the past 6 months or so?

And as for actually interacting with this place, fundamentally, most of my engagement with a platform comes from the comments. And holy fuck are the comments here absolutely fucking awful. It puts me in a mindset where when I go to this website, I'm mentally preparing myself for a session of "upvote the sane takes, downvote the unhinged bullshit, and debate whether it's worth replying to the particularly unhinged takes and getting into an internet slapfight (hint: the answer is usually no)." And that's fine to do for a while, but...

I'm tired, boss.

I'm tired of being angry and scared all the fucking time. I'm tired of arguing and exposing myself to the kind of toxic shit that you would normally hear from the angry drunk on the corner who hasn't showered off the vomit from his last hangover, and you could safely ignore. And for a place that is supposedly mostly populated by leftists (y'know, the groups you would expect to be relatively accepting of minorities and adopt a "live and let live" mindset), holy FUCK I have seen more hate for furries in the ~16 months of using Lemmy than I did in a decade of using Reddit.

And that's the other problem with this place--the moderation absolutely fucking sucks. On the one hand, you've got literal stalinist admins running Those Instances (.ml, lemmygrad, hexbear, etc.) issuing instance-wide bans for the mildest of lukewarm "maybe harm reduction is good actually" takes, and on the other hand you have mods and admins on the not-fucking-nutso instances so traumatized by Reddit moderation that they're wringing their hands over "well we don't want to have the appearance of impropriety and power abuse" while literal, 90s-style BBS trolls run rampant, flooding the platform with shit and making the comments even more toxic than they already are.

Coming from someone who is has a few years of moderation experience, here's a dirty little secret of moderation: You cannot have an absolute, 100% objective standard. The instant you shackle yourself to the standard of objectivity, you open the door for trolls and bad-faith actors to push their discourse up to the very edge of the rules, testing the boundaries, reveling in the game of "how much can I shit all over your community while staying within the rules?" You HAVE to leave yourself at least some wriggle room to ban someone because they're a shithead without a 5-page essay justifying why, or you'll find yourself powerless against the inevitable onslaught of galactic martial artists. You should absolutely have methods to appeal and review moderator actions, and I do support transparency whenever possible, but moderation is fundamentally walking a tightrope of very unpleasant judgment calls that will inevitably piss off someone (if nobody else, the person who you banned and the people who want to see your community burn for their amusement).

Similarly, I think I'm going to wind down my presence on Mastodon for similar reasons. In my time there, I've been exposed to some of the pettiest, Mean Girls-esque, high school bullshit drama I've ever seen in my life. I've seen friends scramble to find new instances because some rando neither of us heard of mouthed off to the wrong asshole and got their instance put on a blocklist, I've seen groups of people that normally I would love to chill with, swap stories over beers, and generally get to know accuse one another of being racist and/or transphobic, with an astounding lack of grace, forgiveness, and willingness to understand one another's perspective and actually fucking listen to people. Similarly to my experience with Lemmy, it's mildly amusing to read up on the latest drama, but one can only spill the tea for so long before they get tired of cleaning up the mess and actually want to drink the goddamn tea.

I'm not sure what I'll do next, but I think I'm generally done with the Fediverse. Say what you will about corporate, centralized social media--and holy FUCK is there a LOT to complain about--but at least their moderation is less susceptible to the kind of bullshit I've talked about here, so maybe I'll make an account on Bluesky--it seems to have reached a critical mass of furries so maybe I'll be able to find a home there, at least for a good few years.

So yeah. I might get downvoted to hell for this, but I don't really fucking care at this point. It's all gonna be gone in a few months, and so will I.

Coming from pawb.social, we're going to miss you guys. It's been great having you as a sister site, and I wish you weren't going away, though I understand why. You and the people here have definitely made my time better.

Thank you for keeping this instance running for as long as you did. I shall start looking for a new home. c:

See you around on Packmates and wherever else we may interact! c:

I hope I didn't use too much bandwidth, always being on Lemmy... 😖

🥹

It was a pleasure, see y'all around the Fediverse!

Thanks for all of your hard work, Wander!

Thank you for all of your time and effort.

I still don't know much about federation. Can somebody please confirm that I need to make an entire new user account now on a new instance?

I'm not even a furry, but thank you regardless for hosting one of the best lemmy users: Kolanaki <3

Hmm... I'm terrible at saying "goodbyes". So I'll just say this:

Thank you.

Not just for the porn and stuff, there's plenty of sites out there for it. And I'm planning on replicating the communities on pawb anyway. But the community. The last year or so has been pretty turbulent for me, and Yiffit is one of the things that made me make the push to being more outgoing about the things I'm into. To get involved in stuff (even though I don't do it as much as I want - yay anxiety). I think that's true of a number of other people here as well.

However brief this site was up for, take pride in that it provided a safe welcoming space for all who were here.

Yeah, fair enough. Thank you for hosting for me, I know that it requires a fair bit of work, and I know that I was never the most active and engaged community member.

I'll see you guys in the main furry instance when the time comes, then?

What to write here? I really don't know.

I have worried that one day I would go to yiffit and it would just be gone, so thank you for the heads up.

After all my time lurking this is the first place on the internet I tried to be active. Its worked out well for me and has helped more than you will ever know. I've generally felt home here and have enjoyed our little community. This feels a little like loosing a friend. I'll be around some other places now, but it just won't be the same.

Thank you for everything you've done. I'll definitely miss yiffit and its users when its gone.

Thanks for your time and effort on making this instance what it is, I've had a great time with everyone here. Been thinking of commemorating this instance on my next account, maybe: "Jimbo of yiffit.net@pawb.social" for example?

Thank you for all the effort and initiative that you put on Yiffit! I have not been very talkative, but it was a pleasure to follow its communities.

I hope that the community will go on living on pawb.social and other Lemmy instances!

So long, and thanks for all the fish! Well, and the non-fish too. More is needed than just fish twinks for a well-rounded diet.

Thank you for all the time and effort you have put into hosting this instance!

Dang, first dataterm.digital, now yiffit.net, every instance I touch disappears! Maybe I should make my next account on one of the tankie instances to see if the curse can do some good for the world /s.

Jokes aside, thank you so much Wander for hosting yiffit. I'm sure most people are going to migrate to pawb.social, so if yiffit does ever come back in some form other than lemmy, please do post it somewhere, because I would be happy to find this community again!