Every Toot down in Tootville liked Fediverse a lot
But the Grinch, who lived just north of Tootville, did not!
The Grinch hated Fediverse! The whole federation!
Now, please don't ask why, there is no explanation.
It could be his app's round trip times weren't tight,
It could be, perhaps, the bots weren't counted right.
But I think that the most likely reason of all,
May have been his net worth's $42B too small.

Whatever the reason, the app or the bots,
He looked at the Fediverse, hating it lots,
Staring down from his cave with a sour, Grinchy frown,
At the new registrations, below in their town.
For he knew every Toot down in Tootville beneath,
Was busy now, posting decentralized tweets.
"And they use content warnings!" he snarled with a sneer,
"And with Federation there's no 8 buck tier!"

Then he growled with his Grinch throat nervously crowing,
"I MUST find some way to stop Fediverse from growing!"
For Tomorrow he knew the Toot folks of all kinds,
Would wake bright and early. They'd post to timelines!
And then! Oh, the toots! Oh the toots!
Toots! Toots! Toots!
That's one thing he hated! The TOOTS!
TOOTS! TOOTS! TOOTS!
Then the Toots young and old would sit down to their boosts.
And they'd boost! And they'd boost! And they'd BOOST!

BOOST! BOOST! BOOST!
They would boost local timelines, fediverse timelines too.
Which was something the Grinch couldn't possibly do.
And THEN they'd do something he liked least of all!
Every Toot down in Tootville, the tall and the small,
Would see the full timeline, not one paid post or ad.
They'd get more engagement, more good and less bad.
They'd reply! And they'd reply! And they'd REPLY!
REPLY! REPLY! REPLY!

And the more the Grinch thought of this new fediverse,
The more the Grinch thought, "I must now make it worse!"
Why for two or three weeks I've put up with it now!"
"I MUST stop Fediverse from coming! But HOW?"
Then he got an idea! An awful idea!
THE GRINCH GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL IDEA!
"I know just what to do!" The Grinch laughed till he fell.
He would make his own Mastodon instance from hell.

And he chuckled, and clucked, "What a great Grinchy fate!"
"With this RoR app I can now federate!"
"All I need is sysadmin..." The Grinch looked around.
But, sysadmin were scarce, there was none to be found.
Did that stop the old Grinch? No! The Grinch simply said,
"If I can't find sysadmin, I'll make one instead!"
So he called up his app. Then he started a thread,
And he found someone who'd use their desk as their bed.

THEN he loaded some tabs, and he made a domain,
On a ramshackle instance, and he gave it a name.
Then the Grinch said, "First post!" and his posts started down,
Toward the timelines where Toots lay asnooze in their town.
All their windows were closed. No new posts filled the air.
All the Toots were all dreaming sweet dreams without care.
When he came to the first instance down on the square.

"This is task number one," The old Grinchy man hissed,
And he followed all people on that timeline's list.
Then he slid down the timeline, the app was a cinch.
If FOSS geeks could do it, then so could the Grinch.
He got stuck only once, for a moment or two,
When he wanted to thread, didn't know what to do.
Then he drafted some posts all lined up in a row.
"Content warnings," he grinned, "are the first things to go!"

Then he posted some words designed to get engagement,
Around fediverse that triggered enragement.
Abuse! Politics! Violence! Trolling!
Eye contact! Food! The Grinch kept on going.
And he fired up bots, Then the Grinch, as he roused them,
Liked all his posts, one by one, by the thousands.
Then he slunk to his profile, to watch what he loosed,
He'd get more engagement, he'd get all the boosts!