Whale Fall

Somewhere, in the endless blue ocean, a gigantic mammal shudders as it takes its last breath. Thanks to science, we know that all dogs go to heaven, but all whales descend through the murky depths until their carcasses litter the seabed.

Imagine a giant dying. You can't. They are huge and endless. A towering presence which, so it seems, has always been part of our world. They dominate and are indomitable. It is simply unfathomable that they can ever end. Yet end they must.

As the whale dies, we do not know what passes through its cavernous brain. But we do know what the rest of the ocean thinks.

Lunch.

The death of a whale is a thing to be celebrated. The thump of their still-warm body onto the floor is the starting bell for a feast. Some larger predators sense an easy meal and tear off the choicest morsels. But what of the scavengers? What about the new life not yet established? What happens to the weird little creatures just waiting for an energy boost?

In many ways, it was fortuitous that Twitter pre-signalled its death with the Fail Whale.

The twitching corpse is gently floating down to its watery grave. Some of the older and more established social networks have bitten out chunks of the still-fresh body and have run away with their spoils. But the fascinating thing is watching all the new services benefit from the death of a giant. Mastodon, Discord, BlueSky, Qaplion, Nostr, and a bunch of others hollowing out the rotting husk and using it to power their own growth.

Will those .meow social networks ever become a gigaton behemoth capable of ruling the waves? Maybe not, but size is not the only metric of success. Finding and defending an ecological niche is its own reward. Evolution abhors a monoculture.

Several bloated bodies meander through the brine, each one confident that its ageless wisdom will outlast the others. Had they any self-awareness, the hubris would gnaw at their tattered souls until the crushing realisation of their impending doom drove them mad.

Perhaps it will happen to GitHub next. The endless downtime and forced injection of crappy AI will start a death spiral. Already established forges are waiting to pounce once they smell blood in the water. But what critters will emerge to suck the bones of the old giant and develop in unexpected ways? Some bizarre fungal growth will devour the stinking jelly unlocked from those shattered bones and a new ecosystem will emerge.

Will WordPress's increasingly erratic leadership and tangle of legal disputes cause it fatal damage? Once minnows darted away from its presence; now they cautiously nip at its greying skin. Its mighty bellow still echoes through the clammy waters, but there's a tinge of frailty in its song.

Everything dies eventually.

The internal flora and fauna - be they parasitic or symbiotic - eagerly await their host's downfall. A chance to break free and explore new strange new world. A chance to begin a new relationship and co-evolve in unexpected ways.

The biological pump is primed, the hungry jaws of an uncountable fleet of new ideas is just waiting to pounce, the giants swim on in blissful ignorance.

You can read more about Whale Fall on Wikipedia.