There are definitely some weird people who want the clout of owning a "popular" instance, but mark my words they will flame out soon enough if popularity is the root of their desire. Instance management is a lot of tedious work and if you don't have a passion for facilitating conversation and connecting people you're not going to last. This isn't Reddit where a powermod can just sit there and do the bare minimum for free.
Addendum: Yes we know that you think ml/hexbear/grad are tankies and or .world are a bunch of liberals but it gets old quickly. Try and come up with new material.
This is not the place to start flamewars between Lemmy, Mbin and Piefed.
You haven't lurked on Mastodon much.
There are definitely some weird people who want the clout of owning a "popular" instance, but mark my words they will flame out soon enough if popularity is the root of their desire. Instance management is a lot of tedious work and if you don't have a passion for facilitating conversation and connecting people you're not going to last. This isn't Reddit where a powermod can just sit there and do the bare minimum for free.