But do I really want to join *another* app
maybe I'm just not a Bluesky kind of guy
I don’t know if you’ve been on Twitter lately, but it has the dead-eyed vibe of a party that’s over and we’re all just standing around. It’s a little bit awkward, if we’re being honest. Some airheads are still talking a lot and pretending like the party is still raging; but that only makes it weirder.
Most of us have left the party, or at least we’ve zoned out. How often do you check Twitter anymore — once a day? And so everybody’s looking for the exits, they’re looking for a new micro-blogging platform. There was a thing called Mastedon but that was too confusing. And then there was something called Post.news but that flopped because it mostly just #Resistance moralizing. Substack has this thing they call Substack Notes but it’s all writers who write about writing giving short little live-laugh-love style tips about writing.
Now they’ve just told me I need to join something called Bluesky. I logged onto Twitter yesterday and everybody was posting about Bluesky — apparently AOC is on it and so is dril (that’s how Rolling Stone sold the hot-new-app in their headline). The congresswoman and the original shitposter are important accounts in that they are vertebra in the backbone of a social media network.1 If you follow dril and AOC, the algorithm is going to have a pretty good idea of who you are.
Outside of the fact that dril and AOC are on it, Bluesky is attractive because A.) it’s backed by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and B.) it’s in a beta stage, so you have to get an invite to get into it. So you scroll through your Twitter timeline and you see all these people talking about how weird and fun everything is over there on Bluesky2.
And I’m happy that they’re all out there in the Bluesky universe having a weird and fun time. I don’t believe that it’s as fun as they’re making it out to be, but if it is, good for them. I just don’t know that I can do it. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a godawful hipocrite and if this thing starts blowing up and everybody I know is getting their news from there, I’m going to try it out. But the cool kids can have their beta phase.
I’m not a cool kid, not anymore. I’m a grown man — why do I need to be on another social media app? I’m half-ashamed that I’m still on Twitter. Because, apart from Twitter, I’m off all the apps. I got off Instagram and Facebook years ago. That abstention doesn’t make me superior to people who are still on those apps but I suspect I’m happier in the world than I would be if I spent measurable parts of my day scrolling through those hellholes.
And I know this is a ridiculous question to ask of a social media site but if I join Bluesky, how is it going to improve my life? Am I going to be more informed? Probably not. Am I going to be happier? Almost certainly not.
This all sounds like old-man cynicism but as you scroll through Twitter, it seems like the people who are all jazzed about Bluesky are the same people who spent a few weeks trying to convince us that Clubhouse was cool, that Clubhouse was something cooler than a conference call with strangers.
But the larger problem with Bluesky is that everybody is saying it’s the new Twitter. According to TheWashington Post, “Bluesky could be Twitter’s doppelganger, its posts sound a lot like tweets, and at least for the time being, many people seem to be using it mostly to poke fun at the social media giant.” But then again, do I really want to join another Twitter? I’m barely interested in the current Twitter. Maybe the time in my life for tweeting (or in Bluesky parlance, skeeting) has passed.
Now again, I’m a godawful hipocrite and I’ll probably end up logging onto this thing if it takes off. But as much as I’ve never enjoyed being the last person at a party, I’ve never really enjoyed being the first person at a party either. So let the cool kids have the Bluesky beta. I’d rather just, you know, go outside, read a book and look at the blue sky.
Who follows dril and AOC, you might ask? Well, probably the kind of people who write for or read Rolling Stone. Seth Abramson is also on Bluesky but Rolling Stone hasn’t mentioned him in any of their pieces.
the Rolling Stone piece says that one user apparently wrote on Bluesky that the site “feels like our moms all dropped us off at the mall at the exact same time.” And like, what the hell is that — I don’t want to go to the mall. I didn’t even want to go to the mall when I was in middle school.