[rglullis]

> a vast continuum of variation, and is full of niches and clines that are intentionally distant from the global mean.

But they are all sharing the same world. It's all the same ecosystem.

My objection is not because I am against people trying to do something different. My objection is to this delusional idea that this work needs to be isolated from everyone else. It's sterile at best and elitist at worst.

[shakna]

Its a protocol. A means of communication. It can't be isolated, by definition. There's plenty of cross-platform things using it.

It is as elitest and isolationist as RSS - another limited system.

The format is limited, to preserve the user agent's ability to act... As a user's agent, rather than the host. That's it.

Your objection seems to be... People walking a path you wouldn't.

[rglullis]

If you want "an user agent that can act as a user's agent", you just need to use a better user agent. They exist. They work. You don't need a whole transport protocol to achieve that.

My objection is to the justifications people are using to walk this path. Even here, we have different people trying to argue completely different things regarding the isolationist nature. You say that it can't be isolated, Gormo says it's "designed to be airgapped".

Look, I've spent quite a significant amount of time exploring alternatives for a saner web. I've got on the microformats train. I know my way around the indieweb. I'm right now working on some stuff that I hope can make the fediverse easier to use and more accessible. I'm not saying to give up the fight. Quite the opposite: to me it seems that the Gemini crowd is just playing with their toy miniature soldiers and claiming that this is the best we can do. It seems immature and poorly-thought out.

[uamgeoalsk]

It's worth remembering that people are drawn to projects like Gemini for a range of reasons. That's not a weakness, it's a feature. One person might use it as a minimalist publishing platform. Another might enjoy the simplicity or find it a helpful alternative to today's web. Others might engage with it as a space for experimentation. These aren't contradictory; they’re just different use cases reflecting different priorities.

Saying that "better user agents exist" may be true for some people’s needs, but not everyone shares the same definition of "better." You're welcome to recommend user agents you think are worth trying — many of us are curious and open-minded — but it’s not really about convincing everyone to see things your way. Preferences aren’t problems to be solved.

And honestly, for a lot of us, Gemini isn’t some war we're waging. It’s a community project, a space to build and share things that resonate with us. If it doesn’t click for you, that’s fine. But calling it "masturbatory" or "playing with miniature soldiers" doesn’t add anything meaningful to the conversation. It just makes it harder for others to engage in good faith — and that’s unfortunate, because thoughtful disagreement is welcome. Dismissiveness isn't.