Not for the first time, I find myself contemplating shutting down my social media accounts. I don't have many of them left any more; I have a Facebook account, which I was only really keeping around because I was an admin of the Evercade page, but no longer really have that responsibility, and a Bluesky account, which I'll talk more about in a moment.
Facebook, at this point, I probably can just get rid of. I'm not sure if my WhatsApp account is connected to it (I don't think it is?) but other than that, I have absolutely no reason to use it. No-one speaks to me on there, I don't like using it and it is, thus, largely useless to me. That should be fairly straightforward; my only real hesitation is the aforementioned professional responsibility, as there are times where I may have to hop in and cover moderation if no-one else is available to do so.
Bluesky is a more difficult one. For many folks, Bluesky has taken the place of Twitter, and that is the primary reason I have been using it. The combination of short-form posts and ease of starting conversations with people you follow has long been an appealing element, just like it once was with Twitter. But at the same time, Bluesky, being a heavily left-leaning platform, is very much home to some of the worst kinds of behaviour that turned me off Twitter in the first place. (The behaviours that are keeping me off Twitter now are, of course, from the opposite side of the political spectrum, and far more odious. But still.) While I, too, am a left-leaning individual, there's a particular breed of leftie that likes to make a lot of noise about whatever their hobby horse of the day is, and it can get very tiring when it feels like there is never a moment's peace.
Thing is, many of these issues are valid things to care about, but they often end up becoming "guilt by association" exercises, with other people and organisations getting drawn into the crossfire just because they might have once, in the past, crossed paths with whatever the target of the hour is. At that point, people start getting hurt; people who don't deserve to be hurt. And that's the biggest thing that makes me contemplate shutting things down. I am one of those people who have been hurt by situations like this, not because I (or any organisations I am attached to) have done anything wrong, but because at some point we have crossed paths with the target of someone's ire.
This might sound pretty cut and dry. I'm having negative feelings about Bluesky, so why don't I just jack it in?
Well, because for all its irritating features, it is the one and pretty much only place online where I feel like I have a connection to other people. There are a few people I know there; there are a few people I have got to know there; there are a few people I would like to know there. Cutting my connection to all those people because I am pissed off and exhausted at the behaviour of some other users feels… disproportionate and excessive.
The alternative, of course, is to take steps to remove the people whose behaviour I object to from my feed. Bluesky has numerous ways of doing that, including muting individual comment threads, muting users and blocking users. Honestly, that is probably the answer in this situation, but I'm always a bit hesitant about this, because in many cases, the people who have been exhibiting behaviour I object to aren't like that all the time; some of them are even folks that I like. But I don't feel comfortable confronting them on things like this, because, like I say, I don't necessarily think the core of what they're arguing is wrong; hurting other people unfairly, however, is. And that nuance often tends to get lost in online disagreements. I've had enough negative experiences in the past to know that for absolute sure.
So I sit here, with no particularly ideal solutions at hand. Close Bluesky, and end up feeling completely lonely and isolated, because no-one checks in on people if they're not on social media any more? (I've tried this before. It's like you cease to exist, even if you're doing something like I'm doing here, and updating a blog regularly.) Mute, unfollow or block the offenders and risk kicking off arguments that don't need to happen, and which will inevitably leave me feeling worse? Or just suck it up, recognise that I have a difference of opinion with some people, continue to catch occasional strays and feel miserable and uneasy?
I just want a Third Place where people are chill, man. There are fuck all left in the real world, and it's starting to feel like there are fuck all left online, either. I will never forgive them for taking 1up and its club pages from us.
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