Don't mosey on over to Bluesky

Plus: the meaning of 'authoritarian,' the Gaetz flop, and more

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A take I haven’t written elsewhere

Don’t mosey on over to Bluesky

(via)

In the weeks since the election, Bluesky has been blowing up. The Twitter-like site has reportedly added as many as a million users a day as many left-leaning users of X (formerly Twitter) take a bold stand for our democracy by getting an account on a different social network, one less polluted by the hoi polloi. Meta’s Twitter clone, Threads, saw a similar pace of growth. It’s all very heroic. Or, you know, something.

What I want to propose is that instead of doing this, it would be better to not do this. Quit X, absolutely. But don’t join Bluesky (or Threads or whatever). Three reasons:

1. Bluesky sounds insufferable. The description I see everywhere is that it’s just like c. 2017-2020 Twitter, only more homogeneously and aggressively lefty. Is that what you want?
   
   Admittedly, Twitter was popping back then, at least for journalists and other specimens of the very (politically) online. Those are the years I used the site most frequently—though a lot of that was because I was The Week’s weekend editor for much of that period and thus had to spend every weekend staying on top of presidential policy pronouncements issued via tweet at various ungodly hours. (Ugh, that’s coming back soon, isn’t it?)
   
   But the frisson of chaos and judgment that defined Twitter back then is not something I want to replicate. If that’s what Bluesky offers, thanks, I hate it!