With the huge migration going on lately, I finally took another look and an earnest crack at using my Bluesky account. For those who haven’t used the app/site yet, Bluesky is basically just Twitter/X. It’s X without having to think about Elon Musk, which in itself is a victory of sorts. There are ostensibly nicer people there, I guess, and there aren’t as many bots (yet) or other unsavory aspects (yet). As I sat there and stared at my feed, though, I had the recurring thought that I just can’t do this all over again.
When I say Bluesky is just Twitter, I mean it. Everyone is comfortably slotting back into their respective niches, and that’s great. People clearly feel more comfortable there, and I don’t want to dog on Bluesky too hard as a service. If you want raw social media, it certainly seems to fit the bill. If you want a nicer place to follow weratedogs or whatever it is you use feeds for, I’m sure it’s there. Corporations and brands—many having already fled from X for a variety of reasons—are taking the hint, too.
Which means it’s going to become more like Twitter every single day.
All the flavors you either love or hate are present and accounted for. Everyone is still incredibly thirsty for engagement, and numbers do, indeed, go up. In a way it feels like an alternate timeline, in which Twitter kept being tolerable, even though everyone lovingly called it a Hellsite well before the Musk regime. The me of a few years ago would have loved this. The me of today is just tired of it all.
I’d much rather read what people have to say in other formats. Forums and Discords and blogs seem more attractive to me as far as being social online is concerned. I want to read what people are thinking; I just don’t want to read what everyone is thinking. That softly thudding anxiety of having to be subjected to everyone’s opinions in one place wore on me over the years, and probably changed the way I think in a number of ways, for better or worse. In many ways it was a burden, like being stuck in an eternal comments section from which there is no hope of escape.
That’s really what this is all over again. It’s another sprawling comments section, and it’s not going to be all neat and tidy for much longer. It would be nice to think you have a safe space online to enjoy yourself in good company, but that’s literally just what forums are for. Sure, you might not get the kind of dopamine hit you get from likes and shares and quotes and all the push notifications that go along with them. But at least it’s easier to put it all out of your mind.
I’m ready to dial it all back either way. The Internet is dead. Long live the Internet.
subhumanzoids 