2024-12-25

I kinda wanted to make a microblogging section so I could be a bit more unhinged and loose but oh god some of the randos on bluesky are getting to me...

... It really is the most unpleasant part of that website right now. Most of it is minor -- just papercuts, random people, replying banally to posts with just this uncomfortable amount of disconnection. Sometimes, though rarely, people ARE rude. Even then though, it's not birdsite rude. X is filled with nasty, cruel freaks. Bluesky will have people posting at you like they're you're mother, even though they're just some random person who saw your post on their awful "discover" feed.`

I hate that there are two different ways people use social media. One is to actually be social, making jokes for your friends and followers, having conversations. Others use it almost like a replacement for news sites. At best, they use it as ways to interact abstractly or parasocially. They want to talk at people, things, or institutions. Their words aren't interaction, they're graffiti, one sided communication that co-opts a space to assert their own existence. Like graffiti... without all the skill and artistry and you know, on your joke post and not on the wall of a dilapidated building. These are people not used to talking to people on the internet... or at least not doing so in spaces like these.

These people make the more directly social way more intolerable. Social media posts are public, but the Mall Foodcourt is also public and gosh darn it, wouldn't it be rude to just listen in to a conversation and drop in on it? But since we're so obsessed with discoverability, our mallcourt conversations are just being projected into the ear of some random dad buying shirts at Kohls. I hate it.`