For reasons I myself cannot entirely understand, while knowing exactly who Elon Musk was did not put many people off Twitter, Musk and a Trump victory has led to the deeply cringe phenomenon of “refugees” making their way over to Bluesky. I already had a Bluesky account and figured I need to know what’s up, so I will now look at that Twitter as well as old-Twitter, which is of course no longer officially called Twitter but we all know what it is.
I need to be where the discourse is, both because of whichever pathology makes me feel that I need this, and because I’m one of the ding-dongs who turned that pathology into a livelihood. I am (self-serious voice now) a professional opinion writer and podcaster. It happens! I could opt out, but I’d be sending out resumes into the void, ones containing two unmarketable skills (a French PhD and copious knowledge of things moderately-online; very-online still eludes me).
So now I look, again, at Bluesky. Not instead-of, which would be more bearable, but in-addition-to. Do you have to post the same dumb profundity each time on both? It’s like when George Costanza’s parents split up and he has to go to both of their terrible households.
Twitter’s terrible for the usual reasons, the new-blue-check incentive structure boosting trad-to-go-viral content of the lowest common denominator. But I have the timeline I have, I follow reasonable (if that’s the word for it; it’s all subjective) people, most of whom almost certainly fall on the Democrat-if-American end of things, and it remains useful for getting an overview of what’s out there.
Bluesky is… I will put it like this. It has like three major personalities, dedicated posters or beloved of those, and two of those are the only two writers who (for reasons I couldn’t begin to guess) block me on Twitter. I want to be like, I don’t want to know your business, ladies! (Both are she/hers.) But there they are, their wisdom apparently peak Bluesky thought.
The Bluesky consensus appears to be not just that it’s bad that Trump won (agreed; unclear the value of a platform where everyone thinks this but fine) but that this is the only thing globally of interest (American hegemony!) and also that Trump absolutely did not win because of anything to do with progressive sanctimony, a thought expressed with progressive sanctimony, so it hardly seems worth arguing with anyone on that front.
There are “starter packs” where you can make sure you follow all the Good people who were once on Twitter, lest you find yourself craving the menswear guy’s content but not being able to quite place what it was that was missing from your life.
I have tentatively dipped a toe in, aka done some of my usual posting but there, and promptly learned I have the vibe all wrong, have not read the room.
Substack has Notes, yes, but it isn’t a Twitter, it’s too much ‘here’s something someone you don’t know and aren’t interested in knowing pondered, dorm-room-style, 23 days ago.’ Sorry folx.
Instead there are now the two Twitters to follow, a tab open for each, until you throw your devices into the nearest body of water and retrain as an AI robot, or whatever the field of the future may be.
Subscribe to Close-reading the reruns with Phoebe Maltz Bovy
All the clothes, interiors, and cultural politics of TV shows very much not of the moment.
I'm now actively on TwiX, though barely, AND Bluesky and Threads. I'm technically on Mastodon too but haven't checked in ages. Quite a few climate and ag reporters seem to be on Bluesky now, so that's made it a nice professional forum to ask questions about things like climate modeling and animal welfare data. There is also a Gardening feed that looks nice. I'm still not sure what to make of Threads but there was a recent influx of journalists and I also like the JewishThreads feed for posting my challah on Fridays. I don't want to delete X entirely but it's just not as fun as it used to be. Then again, trading one social media channel for three is also not super fun.
I get continued value out of Twitter/X, mainly because I limit how many people I follow and I've followed many of them for years. I'm also mostly "read-only", I don't care to get into back-and-forth arguments. I've recently added Bluesky because some folks I follow in the aviation and computer tech fields have moved there and I didn't want to lose track of them. But overall I'm not much impressed so far. I don't think it's going to replace Twitter.