I actually ran my own crooked little pirate station back when acne and hormones were still my main drama. My command center was my grandfather’s “radio shack,” and yes, that’s what people called HAM radio set-ups.

It smelled like dust, old wires, and pipe tobacco. I’d sneak in, crank up punk records, and talk all kinds of shit about my high school like I was Wolfman Jack! lmao

There was some some movie that came out about that time, about a teen running a pirate radio station that his high school listened to, and I thought it was awesome. Christian Slater was in it. “Pump Up The Volume.”

For six glorious months, I broadcasted into the void as a one-man revolution pumping static and anger into the uni. Then my gramps got a letter that threatened a fine so monstrous it could have bought ten lifetimes of gas station burritos. Ten thousand motherfuckin dollars or some shit!! He was pissed.

My audience was basically one guy, and that one guy never helped me get laid. So that was the end of my pirate radio empire.

I miss that shack tho, so I’m looking to get back into it. Building a radio shack in my backyard. Getting equipment locally sourced and from eBay.

Legal this time, cuz I’m gonna take my radio operators test and get certified. Only preppers really care about shortwave radio these days. But those are my peeps, so…

Wish I’d inherited my gramps’ radio equipment. Shit’s expensive now.

Good points, but the reality is it’s still tiny compared to mainstream platforms. The communities are smaller, the reach is limited, and a lot of the conversations I care about still happen on places like Reddit or even mainstream social media.

I enjoy the Fediverse for what it is and support the idea behind it, but I can’t fully leave the bigger platforms yet because that’s still where most of the people and content are.

I already joined and it’s awesome! Thanks for your work on this. And thanks to everyone else who worked on it!