It seems like Twitter’s day in the sun is finally coming to an end. With the deadline looming for the site to start scraping everyone’s posts to train its AI models, Elon being an absolute fucking maniac (not in a fun way) and Trump being in office, a lot of people — including some well-established figures and brands — have been jumping ship and turning to Bluesky. Hell, even the Clifton Suspension Bridge has decided to ditch Twitter. And no, I’m not making that up.
I haven’t been following the progress of all the “Twitter alternatives” that sprang up a while back too closely, but it seems like a lot of people are favouring Bluesky, which I must confess is one that I’ve been on for a little while now. Threads sounds like an absolute dead end of a social network — tech commentator Ed Zitron describes it as “Twitter made of Instagram comments” — and the less said about shit like Gab, Truth Social and Parler (does that one even still exist?) the better.
I’m interested to see where things will go. The vibe on Bluesky right now is very positive; many folks quite rightly describe it as feeling like Twitter from 10+ years ago, and they’re absolutely right in terms of atmosphere. The users have collectively decided to not allow it to fall into negativity and ragebait like Twitter has become in recent years, and there is a shared understanding that “block early and block often” is the best approach to anyone being a dickhead.
This is helped enormously by Bluesky’s “nuclear block” function, which means that if someone quote-replies a post then blocks the person they quoted, the quote will appear as blocked for everyone. That helps prevent dogpiling and discourages people from going around looking for trouble. Couple this with the “detach quote” function, where if you do find yourself quote-replied and you’re getting grief as a result, you can simply unclip your post from the quote and be left the fuck alone. Much better than Twitter’s woefully ineffective mute and block functions — oh yeah, Twitter made block work so that anyone you blocked can still see your posts, which is… great.
At this point, anyone still on Twitter is in absolute denial. The place is infested with bots, scammers, right-wing fucknuts and Elon sycophants who want nothing more than just a crumb of billionaire dick to suck. And with the impending “AI” shit looming, I’m not surprised people have finally had enough. I’m certainly never going back, and I think my boss and I need to have a serious conversation about whether we start focusing our professional social media efforts on Bluesky instead of Twitter. There are a lot of cool retro game peeps over there, and I think Evercade would fit in well there.
Of course, there’s always the thing to ponder: do people really want “brands” on a social media site? And I guess it depends what they’re doing. If all they’re doing is engagement bait crap, probably not. But this might be a fun opportunity to experiment with doing something a bit different, in a place with an altogether different vibe.
Something to consider next week, certainly — my boss is off this week, otherwise I’d have a chat with him about it tomorrow. In the meantime, Bluesky seems to be a pleasant enough place to hang out from a personal perspective, and a fair few people I know have showed up there. It’s social media how it used to be before all those sites made us want to kill ourselves every day, and I’m sure that won’t last forever. But while it does, we may as well enjoy it.
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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