I’m weary of all social media platforms

Twitter was the place I liked to be from 2006 until 2022. Or more accurately, it was the place I liked to be from 2006 until around 2015. After that, it was the place I felt I needed to be. Still, I managed to curate my Twitter feed well enough to avoid most of the awful bits. I’m a CIS white male, which made it easier of course.

Then Musk happened. I gave him the benefit of much doubt, hoping that just maybe he would “fix” things. The opposite has happened so far, so I’m out. I visit every few days to see if I’ve missed anything from my friends still there, but otherwise, it’s no longer a place I want to spend time or contribute to. It’s quite sad, honestly.

Mastodon to the rescue, right?! Sort of. Mastodon is a great idea. It’s distributed and federated and built on top of an open protocol. All good things. But it’s the culture that has put me off lately. There are a lot of people who feel it’s their job to police how everyone else uses the platform. “You need to CW things like that!”. “Hey, you didn’t add alt text to that image, shame on you!” In some cases, the scolding is justified, but who gets to decide? Not you, that’s for sure.

I signed up for Bluesky a few days ago. I don’t know why, really. I guess it’s because I try just about every new service, whether I need it or not. Also, I have been lamenting the loss of early Twitter. Those were heady days. The last couple of days on Bluesky have felt a little like that, which is nice. It’s currently like a calm Twitter.

It’s already changing. The Bluesky app is brand new and was really only meant as a way to test the API/Protocol they’re building. And yet, people sign up (for the beta, remember) and start demanding better blocking, GIFs, and whatever other flavor of Twitter they feel is missing. It’s a bit like Mastodon in that half of the conversation is dedicated to discussing the service itself. This is typical but gets old quickly.

The other Mastodon-like behavior is the non-stop snarky anti-Twitter smugness. That, too, gets old quickly. We get it, you’re all so above social media in general and Twitter in particular. I kind of want to tell everyone to get over themselves and just go back to sharing fun things they’re doing instead of pointing and yelling “That’s BAD!” at everything else.

Anyhoo, I’m just venting after reading a heated discussion (on yet another social network) about whether using Bluesky is “approved” because Jack Dorsey is loosely involved in the project¹. Remember, Jack did a Bad Thing that one time, so if he even walks by the project it’s contaminated. I disagree, but I sure as hell don’t feel like arguing about it.

In fact, I don’t feel like arguing about anything online. I don’t know how to avoid that and remain on any of the current social media platforms. This is why I write here on my blog that almost no one reads, and which requires some effort if you want to fight me. (But how hard is it to write an email, honestly?)

April 27, 2023 social Reply by email