I really tried to like Bluesky. Even wrote a minimal PDS to help gain a technical understanding of the platform.
In the end though I found the social aspect was a similar experience to what the author of this piece describes. Boring, repetitive, and full of a particular type of person I have no desire to interact with.
So I went back to X, which for all its flaws at least has interesting content and, perhaps most importantly, has no equivalent to Bluesky's "nuclear block", so you can follow, and even participate in, divisive discussions where someone has been blocked.
Blocking is basically abuse nowadays in form of “coward block”. Very common in reddit, around topics about EVs (interestingly many of their usernames follow same pattern which makes me think these are malicious bots).
Basically they’ll respond to your comment with a falsehood and block you so you can’t respond (and most times won’t even see the response). Comment stays up for rest of the gang to brigade on.
That was Reddit's choice. Blocking used to be a mute function. Then in 2021 or so they changed it to "you can't participate in a conservation I'm having at any point in the chain." Everyone said it was a bad idea and one post even demonstrated how easy it'd be to abuse such a function:https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/sdcsx3/test...
Awful idea.
All that said: Twitter stule threads are much more ephemeral. So a block isn't as impactful there.
Bluesky is less about dopamine hits and pointless online debate. X is TikTok'ified dopamine hit 'discussion'.
I explore music intentionally. If I firehosed random music nonstop I’d burn out. Do that with social media randos, with an even lower quality bar? Nope. No one tells people they “shouldn’t curate music, just listen to whatever randomly plays.”
No media/person is owed attention. Blocking and shaping my experience is being rational/intentional, not cowardly. Yours is the same logic behind removing YouTube dislikes and replacing Netflix’s old, user-shaped system with today’s garbage algo. Suffer through piles of trash on the off chance something good appears. Again no. I have limited attention.
I deliberately seek out well-reasoned, articulated opposing views in formats that actually support learning and understanding.
Short-form media is useful for discovering topics, not for POV growth. The format itself doesn’t support meaningful discussion or exposition. It's 'short form'. It gets eyeballs so people try to take advantage of the reach and kinda shoe horn stuff in, but the format sucks for that.
> So I went back to X, which for all its flaws at least has interesting content and, perhaps most importantly, has no equivalent to Bluesky's "nuclear block", so you can follow, and even participate in, divisive discussions where someone has been blocked.
In other words you agree with Musk's reasons for buying Twitter and opening the place up to other voices than just those which fled to places like BS. Good for you to acknowledge this and to realise that just being in the same place - virtual or physical - with others who you happen to disagree with does not 'taint' the place nor does it make it impossible to interact with most of them except for the looney fringes. BS was bound to end up like it did just like e.g. Gab ended up the way it did: it attracted those fringes, the I-support-the-current-thing types, the follow-the-leader factions, the I-am-very-special-and-you-should-venerate-me crowds. Some of them remained on or returned to what is now X where they do their thing but there's not enough of them to set the tone so you can ignore them.
>just being in the same place - virtual or physical - with others who you happen to disagree with does not 'taint' the place nor does it make it impossible to interact with most of them except for the looney fringes
Unfortunately, my line of work attracts the Looney fringes. So I withdrew from most mainstream stuff as I saw the above metaphor happen in real time over the span of a decade. Good for you if you are in a more tame profession/hobby (or perhaps, you're a part of it. In that case, condolences).
Do you actually believe that, say, Barack Obama [1] or Pope Leo XIV [2] are nazis? If the answer is "yes" you may have more in common with MAGA looney fringes than you think.
It is the 'democrat' looney fringe, not the MAGA looney fringe which labels everyone a nazi so I suspect that someone who labels the mentioned individuals as such is more likely to be part of the former fringe than of the latter. Had they been part of the latter the label would have been 'commie' or something along those lines.
Ah yes, those scary nazi's who, if the media and many of those influenced by them are to be believed have swamped the streets together with fascists and otherwise-scarily-labelled people.
That's the problem with labelling anyone you don't like a nazi, fascist, racist, homophobe, 'trans'phobe, etc. By the time you're done labelling everyone outside your narrow corridor of allowed opinions with those scary labels you'll find that most people carry at least one of them and as such have gotten used to those terms. Nazi? Well, given that my neighbour - nice guy, helps out when needed, doesn't bother anyone but was called such because he did not want his daughter to share a bathroom with that weird punk in a dress - and my uncle - put a Trump sign in his front yard - and my colleague - drives a truck - seem to be nazi's I guess it is alright to be a nazi nowadays?
I cam only hope that you, being in such a scary profession/hobby that you have felt the need to withdraw from most mainstream stuff do not make the mistake of labelling everyone outside your narrow window of allowed opinions with these scary labels. Or, perhaps, you do, in that case I won't send condolences 'cause you're part of the problem.
In the end though I found the social aspect was a similar experience to what the author of this piece describes. Boring, repetitive, and full of a particular type of person I have no desire to interact with.
So I went back to X, which for all its flaws at least has interesting content and, perhaps most importantly, has no equivalent to Bluesky's "nuclear block", so you can follow, and even participate in, divisive discussions where someone has been blocked.