Blue Sky

[AndCoronets]

What do you make of it? I was all for a break from the cesspit that it is TwiX, but I'm getting dubious vibes. Set up my account, searched for a few of the accounts which I follow on Twitter, got to Kathleen Stock and all I found was transphobe, blah blah type posts. Depressing.

I'm on Bluesky.

One of the first things I did was look for other gender critical people. I found none. TRAs are having a field day over there. I saw one TRA suggesting Harry Potter be taught in schools in order to analyse its fascist tendencies. All because Rowling is GC

Any politicians there yet?

I've seen James Dreyfus is having a hoot.

All I found were lots of dull photos posted by people for some reason. I think the software is better than X, and it looks cleaner. But it doesn't sound very nice.

Twix is fine for me. I don't look at the For You tab that often, and i don't follow accounts that make disgusting posts.

I enjoy Football Twitter, book Twitter and the fact that i can RT posts from Surrogacy concern without having twats telling me that their SIL was a surrogate for her twin and everyone is happy, etc etc.

I like Bluesky for the fact that it is quiet, but it feels a bit smug, it is very much TWAW and if you have a different opinion there is a pile on to cancel you (have seen it happen to others, i am fairly circumspect there)

Yes there is nothing like that in her books.

Except perhaps the money obsessed goblins with stereotypical offensive Jew features, the slaves elves enjoying being slaves, the "Cho Chang" Chinese character and the "Shackledbolts" black guy.

Written by someone who spends a lot of time tweeting about trans people. Interesting.

Sounds depressing and avoidable

I only ever look at the 'people you follow' tab.

If I have a 'twitter session' I'll refresh that and get a good real time data drop on my follows - it reduces algorith issues (you still will see this in replies to posts though).

I don't get the angst over there being so much awful stuff for this reason. Perhaps its my choice of follows. It would be disappointing if the sensible heads fucked off - and it would be counterproductive for their aims.

Good piece about Bluesky and Twitter from Victoria Smith/Glosswitch

https://thecritic.co.uk/twitter-has-always-been-toxic/

Obviously there’s a lot that’s happened since those days. Following the results of the US election, there’s been a surge of X users moving over to Blueskyky, exiting Elon Musk’s evil lair to be part of a nicer, kinder community. If I’m reminiscing now, it’s because so much about Bluesky at least, the experience I’ve had so far reminds me of those early days of feminist Twitter. So many people self-identifying as good, so many invitations to follow the path of righteousness, so much confidence that we, here, are better than the othersrs! So much faith that your own cruelty can be of the kindest sortrt_! I’d forgotten it all and can feel the pull all over again. A bit of me thinks “I could be righteous, too!”, although obviously, I can’t, what with having become a Known Terf. Already I have had my share of “nice” invitations to leave the “nice” space. Still, the atmosphere reminds me of the side I thought was mine, the moral confidence I used to pretend to have, the way in which I used to think if I knew the rules for staying out of trouble, doing or saying the things I actually believed could come later.^

Since the so-called gender wars and “righteous” abuse of feminists really took offff in the latter half of the 2010s, there has been a shift in the tensions between supposedly “privileged” voices and “ordinary” activists. Or rather, there’s been an option for anyone who identifies as progressive, including those with the most material and social advantages, to make common cause against “the transphobe” — a figure which blends together left-wing feminists and far-right conservatives into one easily denounceable package. The actor Alex Winter (bio: Trans Rights are Human Rights) announced his arrival on Bluesky withth “It’s time to take solace and pride in what people disparagingly call a bubble. I don’t need to talk to the ‘other side’, to the hate-filled, the reactionary, the proudly low-info”. It’s possible to make such sweeping statements without being dismissed as an insufferable snob, or having to make any dramatic apologies for privilege. It’s more straightforward, I suppose.

It’s not that I think we shouldn’t be able to interact only with those we choose. Given the past decade, though, it’s strange and fills me with a kind of envy to see people who seem to retain so much trust in their own side. While I’ve met some amazing people online (and hope to keep in touch with them in one place or another), so many of us have lost that broader trust, though it was never a healthy kind of trust to have to begin with.

BS seems to be pushing hard for publicity atm, this will likely drop off.

I recall people talking about moving to other platforms before

Remember when people opened Ello accounts (you had to be invited) because they were fed up with Facebook?

All the people I knew who did that are still on Facebook, and Ello folded last year.

Christinapple the Harry Potter books are a very clear allegory against fascism. Voldemort and the Deatheaters believe that only 'pure bloods' have value, while 'mudbloods' and 'muggles' should be persecuted and subjugated. The good guys fight and eventually defeat Voldemort.

My takeaway from this is that the Twit place is now a chocolate bar, whereas the new place is a load of BullS.

Colin Wright:

Oh brilliant.

So BlueSky have just set themselves up as a challenge to see how quickly you can get yourself banned from the platform for saying perfectly reasonable things, never mind offensive things.

You know how this is going to go don't you? Especially given they've publically said how they are struggling to keep up with the sheer number of reports of 'unacceptable behaviour' and the fact they are having to prioritise child abuse images.

They've set themselves up as a target to be deliberately trolled under the weight of their own censorship system to the point of collapse

It will become a sport with a badge of honour to how quickly you can get kicked off!

Is blue sky basically where all the extreme lefties have flounced off to?

Not a BSer but I just read this summary; "It's hard to see how Bluesky represents anything other than a sweaty bubble of cope."

Twix and BS are distasteful in different ways. Twix is full of Elon Musk, Temu adverts and right-wing views. BS is heavily into genderism. I don't follow any genderists, but this morning my feed was full of she/hers with anime avatars posting their sketches of extremely well endowed anime girls and female animals.

Oh my gosh my post just hit an automatic censor. Was just saying that BlueSky is distasteful in its own way... verging on me feeling more uncomfortable there than on Twitter.

🤣

Indeed.

Do BlueSky understand the concept of a troll?

I have my doubts. They are too busy taking themselves seriously.

I find the anime demi-porn on bluesky very offputting, but a few people I used to enjoy reading on Twitter are there so I'll make the occasional visit. But I see more and more people declaring that they will stay on Twitter and be decent as long as they can.

I do that thing of reading the people I enjoy reading, so the algorithm can't do much, X isn't a hellscape for me, more like a bookshop cafe with clever people discussing history and art and and gardens and folklore and other nice stuff while cats and dogs ramble round under the tables.

I managed to find a couple of GCs over the weekend and then went through their follower/following lists to find others. I repeat the process every now and then and so far I've managed to find about thirty accounts that seem relevant, some known to me from X and some not.

However I'm not sure how useful this will be anyway, given the degree of censorship on Bluesky. I cannot get over Naomi Cunningham's account being labelled as intolerant.

I read that Blue sky was created by a group of TW, so don't expect it to be kind to any women with GC views. Don't see the point of exchanging one echo chamber for another.

I am sticking with Twitter (although will look at the butterfly place occasionally)

By looking at "followers" rather than "for you" you get fewer shitty posts (assuming you don't follow shitty accounts) and looking out for hashtags helps.

Then if it does all get too much find a wholesome hashtags and spend 30 minutes liking lots of posts. It resets the algorithm somewhat

Harry Potter was a fun children's book sure, but if we're talking about books for children I also liked the Famous Five and Secret Seven where children would solve mysteries and help the police catch adult criminals. The Naughtiest Girl by Enid Blyton is good too as it shows how important friendship is even if one hates the idea at first.

I think some of us seem to forget that Harry Potter is after all a storybook for kids from 20+ years ago. I think Miriam Margoyles (Prof. Sprout) said not long ago she was "worried" about the 40-something adults who made Harry Potter their personality and life.