What is Bluesky for?

It's a better Twitter! But was Twitter ever good?

I joined Bluesky in the past week, along with a large swathe of the TTRPG “community.” It’s been really fun, lots of good vibes over there. And I got “jackedward” as a handle! How rare is that!

Here are some things I’ve experienced:

• I’m discovering new products, projects, and creators I wasn’t previously exposed to. (Good)

• I am sharing little updates about my own creative work more unselfconsciously, though in a way that seems implicitly tied to marketing. (Sorta good?)

Here are some other things I’ve experienced:

• Now, when I want to share projects, ideas, and articles, I’ve moved away from sharing with friends, associates, and my tiny blog audience, and toward broadcasting them to a vague or even imaginary “public.” (Seems bad)

• I’ve felt a compulsion to share not based on worthiness, but based on timeliness and regularity — to appear “active.” (Bad)

• I have an app that, without even sending notifications, subtly impels me to check it at any time of day, and often leaves me uninspired or with zero concrete take-aways. (Bad)

• I’ve found myself encountering attitudes, disfunctions, and forms of debate that I’d either not seen or long abandoned since leaving behind platforms like Twitter.

• For the first time in years, I have my finger back on the pulse of the topics that dominate 24-hour news networks like CNN and Fox News. (Bad)

Does the bad outweigh the good? Hard to say! I’m not sure the things in my “good” category can only be found on Bluesky.

I’m going to keep using it for a while, I believe, see how it feels. So far, I’m not sure it always feels great, even though there seems to be a culture of encouraging one another to always feel great.

So my question is:

Why did we want a Bluesky in the first place?

From what I can tell, the answer to this question is “For the same reasons we’d like something like Twitter, but before it was ruined!” But wasn’t Twitter, before it was ruined, still just simply terrible? Not because of some problem with moderation, or the culture of the platform, but because the tool itself is fundamentally broken, and given to thin, un-nuanced dialogue robbed of context, and thrust into semi-public space? Is Bluesky just Juul, or Diet Coke — an allegedly better version of an implicitly bad thing?

Doesn’t the blade itself, as Homer Joe Abercrombie put it, incite to deeds of violence?

I think another good argument is that it’s good for marketing or promotion, and the healthiest relationship you can have with it is as a marketing and promotion channel. Treat it sparsely, and spare, watch out for para-social relationships, and be vigilant against the compulsion Bluesky Twitter always imposes to discipline your emotional response to marketplace events.

One slogan on Bluesky I’ve heard is “block and move on.” It’s a good one! I just didn’t realize how badly I’d need it.

Progress into the past

Really, the vibes are very good on Bluesky, as they have been with every new and trendy social media platform, at first. You already see some folks mourning for Bluesky — see, they were there a few months ago when Blueky was, well, more like the subjective experience of a Discord server. To this crowd, it already seems like a strange, outwardly-expanding environment.

But to me, it just kinda looks like early Twitter, which is to say, it looks like we’re going backward.

Anyway, I’m working on two little projects I’m set to put out very very soon! The first is a quest for Follow called The Feast, inspired by films like Pig and Babette’s Feast, and the other is a tarot-based worldbuilding game that generates a pantheon of gods for your TTRPG city or culture!

You can check out little glimpses of The Feast and Earth & All Stars over on Bluesky.