Bluesky has entered the chat
By Bluesky on Tuesday: Can we talk about something beyond the impending federation and whether we need a block button?
Bluesky on Thursday: Wow, you’re here? Hey look over there, it’s Jorts The Cat! And Matty Yglesias! Matty, let us tell you what we think of you. Interspersed with more shitposting and original memes than you might have thought possible.
Things have settled down a bit this morning. Bluesky is beginning to look like a replacement for Twitter, but that still has some way to go.
On Tuesday, Bluesky had about 5000 users. Faithful LGM commenter Faine Greenwood gave me an invite code. The discussion of a block button was reminiscent of my time as a bulletin-board moderator back in the 2000s. Some things never change.
On Wednesday, the numbers of invite codes went up, and people on the waitlist with a history of active Twitter posting were allowed in.
I am not the only one who has been throttling her participation in Twitter. I started long before Musk showed up because of the reply guys. I’m not talking about the pile-ons and active harassment, which I have managed to avoid. I’m talking about the ordinary guys, and yes they are almost all guys, who attach themselves, remora-like, to a carefully crafted tweet to add their little bit of wisdom straight from Wikipedia or to take off on their own tangent. It’s a put-down and an appropriation of my audience by people who have follower counts of two or three figures.
So I’ve limited replies for most of my tweets to people I follow. That’s not entirely satisfactory, because it keeps me from meeting new people. And I just don’t post some stuff because I get tired of the garbage.
It appears that others have felt the same way, and we all knew the reply guys hadn’t made it to Bluesky yet.
Faine was a major component of the fun, and there was the usual party distribution of people dancing on the tables, with the more nerdish of us sitting together and tossing out an occasional comment. Nina Turner tried to be the adult in the room.
Things are calmer this morning, with no sense of hangovers. Jamelle Bouie posted a link to his NYT column today and highlighted the death of the woman who accused Emmett Till. Nina is trying to get some serious topics going. I’ll post this post over there.
What is becoming clear in my search for Twitter alternatives is that the community is everything. Not enough of my homies are at Bluesky yet, but there’s a good start. It needs more international discussion and news from Ukraine. But right now it’s the strongest contender to take over from Twitter.