Let’s just get this out of the way: Social media is a bullshit hassle.
In fact, the only reason I ever entertained using social media was to promote my first book, and that was back in 2008, when Twitter was just finding its footing, Facebook was close to becoming ubiquitous and MySpace was, well, on its way out.
After a while, though, the novelty wore off. People I followed completely forgot I wrote a book (and two others), and the platforms themselves became onerous, if not a complete waste of time to me. MySpace ended up dying, so leaving was no real tragedy, and I stepped off the Facebook wave years before it inevitably crashed into the messy space that it is now. In the latter case, I see constant reminders that I made the right choice.
Twitter, on the other hand, was a much harder habit the break. For eight years, starting in 2016, I tried to walk away, never really getting all the way out the door. Finally, at the end of 2024, I yanked myself off of there.
It’s just as well. It’s not Twitter anymore anyway. It’s X, a site full of a wide range of hateful blowhards. You have a group you hate, like trans people, foreigners or people of color? There’s a whole slew of accounts that will fuel your hatred.
For some reason, though, every account related to sports, including athletes, teams and leagues, remain. It’s because of this that this garbage site survives and anything associated with sports (which, unfortunately, includes my site, the HoriZone Roundtable) is forced to stick around.
Does that make me a hypocrite, taking myself out of the Twitter equation but letting my site remain? Well, there’s a bunch of people in one place that would answer with a resounding yes (although definitely not to my face): It’s Bluesky.
I was one of the people who got the invitation code to join back in the early days of 2023, so, like every other site that has come and gone (Ello, tsu.me, Google+, T2/Pebble), I gave it a whirl, both for myself and the Roundtable.
Impressively, within about six months, I found the entire concept to be objectionable and full of self-important, angry snobs. Not everyone, of course, but enough to make me re-think the entire idea altogether. So, I bailed and probably would have stayed gone had not been for the influx of Twitter refugees that drowned out the constant anger I saw everyday and made it much more tolerable.
But interest wore off, and the anger welled up again. I get it. There’s plenty to be angry about. However, as I point out constantly:
It’s too bad, really, because there are plenty of things that I do like on Bluesky, such as the ability to block someone into oblivion (read: never have to see them again), the super-useful Starter Packs, the ability to create feeds and the moderation tools, including blocklists.
And the last component is great for weeding out any undesirables that seeped over from Twitter/X. But while it’s great that that creates a Nazi-free existence on Bluesky, the platform is full of people I don’t really want to deal with either. Just because you’re a few rungs above the worst people imaginable doesn’t mean you’re immune to people thinking you’re obnoxious.
Maybe it’s the way it was rolled out, using invitation codes that gave off an air of Studio 54-level exclusivity. Or perhaps it’s the long-standing trope that Bluesky people can’t take a joke (which is truer than many will care to admit). It could even be that the biggest draw in the early days of Twitter (read: the arrival of famous people) never really materialized. And maybe it’s the longstanding contention that leadership within Bluesky doesn’t really address glaring issues within the platform. It just hasn’t really reached that critical mass.
It’s possible that with the AT Protocol that Bluesky is built on, alternatives will arise that will allow interactions and new growth. There’s already Blacksky, Northsky and Eurosky, and maybe we’ll see more. But I fear that more widespread adoption is a ways off, if ever.
Widespread adoption, however, is a trait in which Threads has a decided advantage. All you need is an existing Instagram account, and you’re in! However, these are Meta products, so there’s always the drawbacks, specifically data mining for AI, something that made me pull up the tent stakes on Threads years ago before slowly sliding back in, for some reason. Plus the rollout of app features is an absolute bear, especially if you’re someone like me who uses the Web app. And if you haven’t, you’re lucky, because Threads’ Web app is the absolute worst.
Though I did return, I have maybe 20 followers, which is considerably less than when I started Threads the first time around. I also find the experience pretty soulless, with few followers posting things I can’t find somewhere else or just just re-constituting their IG posts. Speaking of IG, I’m there, but as has been the issue, it’s too picture-heavy for me to get a regular poster there. At least some of the Reels entertain me.
Spill and Upscrolled have pretty unique layouts that, if they ever caught on, who do incredibly well. But neither platform is really my scene, though I have accounts at both. Which is too bad, because there’s a lot of potential there.
Also with potential is Spoutible, but it’s clear that if you delete your account, you’re never getting back in. I know this because I put in a support ticket back in October to request my username be restored and it’s still sitting there. Unanswered.
That leaves me with the one platform I joined and never really wanted to leave: Mastodon. I jumped on in November 2017, when there was absolutely nobody there, and stayed ever since. The real problem, to others (not me), was ease of adoption. The start with, you have to pick a server on the Fediverse, which, to the uninitiated, seems like a daunting task (spoiler: It really isn’t). And in 2022, right after Elon Musk took over Twitter, there was an influx of refugees that joined up.
However, before too long, nearly all of those refugees lost interest, opting to go back to Twitter or head to one of the other platforms as they became available. Some of the impediments were likely the lack of a quoting function (which didn’t I didn’t initially mind but really wanted added as time wore on), no real direct messaging system, and some other shortcomings that weren’t available at the time.
Since that time, other platforms, most notably Threads, added capabilities to allow its users to follow Mastodon users, although if you look on the Threads app, you’ll notice that the Fediverse feed is shoved behind the main feed like some sort of kiddy table. Also, not all Threads users opt to share their feeds with the Fediverse, meaning you won’t be able to follow some folks.
The best way to describe Mastodon in its current state is that it’s a very good platform for tinkerers. You know those folks. They’re the ones that make tweaks to their computers or run operating systems like Linux. And I think that’s what appeals to me the most, as someone who’s dabbled in the nerdy arts for nearly the whole of my life. However, that does seem to really turn off normal users, as I witness back in 2022 and 2023, to the point where they inexplicably get violently angry about it.
But I’ve never had a problem with it at all. And slowly but surely, the features that weren’t part of earlier iterations, including quotes, have now come online. I know it’s not perfect, but at least I know that there will be upgrades at some point. That’s not really something that the instant gratification crowd clamors for, but its potential, to me, still intrigues me and is, to date, the one place that I plan to stay put.
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