One Year and 1000 Zoos
Hello dear readers! Tarro here with a quick end of summer meta update! This article is going to be a little bit self-congratulatory, so if that's not your thing feel free to skip this one. But, there's something really interesting and important to me that I want to talk about. And you know what? In a world that's so full of bad news, I want to talk about some good news, so I will!
On August 22nd (time zone depending), the Zooey Dot Pub Matrix server reached 1000 members! Now, granted, that's not active members, that's just the number of people that have connected with our space. You can actually join the rooms in a space individually on Matrix and our general chat room only has 729, but hey, I'm counting it!
I'll be honest, when the Zooey Dot Pub discord server got banned, that was maybe one of the hardest moments for me to keep going. The ZDP twitter account had also recently been taken down, and it really felt like the walls were closing in on us. Big corpo had finally decided they'd had enough of our animal kissing nonsense and decided that they wanted to be done with us for good. I know that we have PLENTY of readers that never look at Discord or Twitter, but still, it felt like we were losing a chunk of ourselves that was going to be impossible to get back.
I'm a workaholic. If you've talked to me at all, that's something that you probably know about me. I always feel like I need to be doing something, because if I'm not, I'm wasting time. And time's the most precious resource we have. So, to fight off the impending feelings of doom after the Discord server went down I dove head first into platform alternatives, all the while telling people asking me that we'd have something new soon and that it would be better and stronger and have way more features and be cooler. I was promising people the moon, because more than anything else I was terrified that we would make something new and nobody would care enough to check it out. Trying to rebuild and failing was almost scarier to me than not trying at all. But, I wanted to try. And, I had an amazing group of people around me who all wanted this to work too. So we got to work.
Maybe I shouldn't be using "we" here, I shouldn't take credit. I helped with some of the decisions to be made, but it was mostly the tech team that took an existing version of a matrix client and made it into something better. They made a perfect seamless join experience, helped with the server infrastructuresetting up the space and figuring out how to add this and delete that. Hell, without them, we wouldn't even know how to ban people. They really did everything to get us rolling. But, they did it, and after a few months, we were finally ready to launch.
e first days, first weeks, they were so weird. It was a space of like 5 mods, 3 tech team , and four or five members. I can't thank the people that were willing to check us out early enough. Kracc, Wyb, Colt, Thereodyke, and OffBrand were the first 5 non-staff members to send a message in the space. Seeing them hanging out in a group we spent so long working on was really magical. It was like buying a new house and then finally getting your friends over for a party so they can see it and talk about how great everything looks. How the floor works and most of the doors open and the tap runs mostly clean water. It was still rough, but it was home.
If you've heard me talk about the ZDPM before, you might have heard me describe it like a house, but really, it was more like inheriting a run down bar. A place that probably doesn't pass the health code, but we do our best to make it work. And, we've been fixing it up little by little to be something better. We're still far from a high class joint, but we're certainly a lot closer to being something that people are comfortable in than we used to be. However, behind the scenes we wanted to build something more than just a bar. We wanted to build a neighborhood.
The Zooey Dot Pub Matrix server is hosted on a server called ZooSpace. That's the aforementioned neighborhood. And, we've been starting to see more and more places start to open up in our little corner of the internet as we've grown. I love the ZDPM, don't get me wrong. But different people are going to be more or less comfortable in different spaces. We might have our bar themed a certain way, but maybe other people would prefer more of a tavern vibe, or maybe others a club. Or a pub. Different things are going to appeal to different people, which is why if we want to grow ZooSpace, we need those different spaces. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the fine folks over at the Zoo Friend Zone. WoofWoofWoofWoof and the team over there created a Discord server a while back, and we were partnered with them up to the point that we got shut down. And so, when we started the Matrix back up, we asked them if they'd be down to do something kinda crazy, and they said yes.
In Matrix, you can do something called a bridge, where you link a channel in a Matrix space, and in a Discord server, so that all the messages sent in either end up in both. We really needed help to grow our space, and so they agreed to create a bridge with , and it REALLY helped people find us. They even ended up creating their own space in ZooSpace. Another bar with a different flavor. Pretty soon after, we got our third
It makes me so happy to see not just ZDPM growing, but ZooSpace as a whole. The internet is such a hostile place to zoos sometimes, and so having something that's fully and totally ours is so important. It means that we'll always have our space, even if everything else goes away. And, it's still growing! In fact, I've been talking with someone recently about starting something up that's REALLY cool. Not just another bar, but a library. Or, you could say, a news room. Regardless of what you want to call it, it seems like there's only good things for ZooSpace from here.
Anyway, ZooSpace tangent aside, I wanted to talk a little bit more about the ZDPM Because that's really the heart of this for me. Watching it grow from a hundred people to two hundred, to five hundred, to a thousand. It's been incredible. I really never believed that we'd make it here, and now that we are here, I just feel so grateful for everyone. Everyone who's poked their head in to see what we're doing, or who's chatted for a bit and then left. Anyone who bothered to try, thank you so much. And, a big huge extra special shout out to the people who have really been putting their time and energy into the ZDPM and help make the place feel alive. Zoo Rights Canada (ZRC), Otter, Skyra, Unusual Horse, Marrow, Woof, Zooto, and the many many many others that have been a part of this for so long, and have helped to keep the space fun and active. It feels weird to just say in chat that I appreciate all of you and the faith that you put in us, and how much it means to me that out of everywhere on this internet you choose to be hereso I'm saying it here in the hopes that you end up seeing it anyway. Thanks. Seriously.
And, of course, I need to say a really really big thank you to my team. The people who I couldn't have done this without. Each and every one of them are so integral and important to everything I do. Without literally any one of them, I don't know if we would have been able to make it to where we are today. Milk, Madhu, Brass, Dogteeth. We've been working together for a long time at this point. Literally years, we've been doing our best together to make a space for zoos. I couldn't ask for a better mod team. You're all so great at your jobs, you're willing to push back when you disagree with things, you're willing to give up your time and energy to try and keep chat moving. You do everything to make this space run, and while moderating the Matrix space has been easier than the Discord server, I hope that you all know that I still very much appreciate you, and the work that you all do. It's really remarkable how far we've all come, and I think all of you have done your parts to leave your marks on this space in ways that are very very positive. I hope that we keep working together a long long time. You aren't just my mod team, you're all my close friends, and I hope that you know that.
And, of course, to the tech team, thank you all as well. Lykon, Tuvik, and occasionally Fawnly, as well as all the people that help out with Zinny development. This app is incredible, and it's only getting better. The amount that y'all have done is magic. Every time there's a new update I'm shocked with how much you're able to do. I really really believe in the future of this thing, not just for me and my group, but for a home for zoos for a long time coming. I want to change the world, and I really honestly think it starts here with this. Thanks so much for the time and effort you put in. And, if you're someone not on the tech team reading this that knows how to code please please reach out, because we always need more hands (or paws), and we have plenty of work that needs to get done!
When the Discord server shut down, we had just over 3000 members. I remember dreaming about how much bigger it could get. The idea of having not just a zoo space, but a safe for work social zoo space with 3000 people in it was mindblowing. But what if we got 5000 people? What if we got 10000? When the Discord server shut down, I remember giving up on those dreams. It was fun while it lasted, but there was always going to be a ceiling. An amount that we could form into a collective before we were a big enough problem and got squashed.
I've started dreaming again. Dreaming even bigger and brighter. And it's all thanks to you. I know I've said it a million times, but I couldn't appreciate you more. When you choose to engage with Zooey Dot Pub, whether it's by liking our tweets, or reading our articles, or talking in our spaces, you're putting your trust in us. In the vision of the future that we all want to make. One where humans and animals can love each other without persecution. Where we can love our partners and share that love with our friends and family. Where we don't need to be terrified of other people "finding out".
At the end of the day, there's no magic number that we need to hit to gain that social legitimacy. But, the more of us there are, the harder we are to ignore. The easier it is to prove that we exist. So thanks for existing with us, dear readers. We've only got up to go from here.
Article written by really all of us at the end of the day, y'know? It's a community effort and all of us coming together really did it. Would I even be here without you? Who knows (August 2026)
Find them at https://twitter.com/hereforthezoo
Questions, comments or concerns? Check out our Matrix server! https://join.zooey.pub
