Friend Ste. my space. rattan. Google+. Bebo. AOL.
Social media platforms come and go…and continue to evolve. Due to the choices of its owners, Twitter/X—always an acid pit of hot takes and instant slurs—is increasingly overrun by trolls and haters, with few guardrails. It’s an increasingly unpleasant place to be, with the signal-to-noise ratio at an all-time low.
BlueSky was one of the Twitter alternatives that launched when things started falling apart, and it’s been quietly picking up steam for a while. Over the past few days, Comics Twitter—that vibrant, malleable community of creators, readers, and sellers—has pretty much packed up its tent and moved to BlueSky. What that means is still very much up in the air…but so is everything else, so join the club.
Unlike several other contenders, BlueSky had solid engineering from the start and a friendly atmosphere that made people want to stay. I’ve had an account since launch (I’m Comixace on every platform) and use it mostly to post the same “I just had lunch” thoughts I used to tweet. While they say shadowbans don’t exist on Twitter, somewhere along the way I upset the feed gods and my engagement was abysmal despite my seemingly strong 20,000 followers. (Or maybe people just don’t like what I have to say, always a possibility.)
BlueSky’s growth last week was surprising. I’ve gained thousands of followers and I think I need to be careful about what I say again because people will see it and respond. BSky has gained about 1 million users a day, who are looking for a place very much like early Twitter, a genial, whimsical place full of jokes. Sure, there’s some savage election commentary, but short of a horde of blue-checking bots, it’s less tiring. This culture is very much community-based, but as the user base reaches 19 million and growing, this culture will be stretched and tested… and morphed again.
The culture that Comics Twitter (and Wrestling Twitter and Metropolis Twitter and all the rest of Twitter) created may never come back. Creators have noticed that over the past two years, as the platform has evolved into a more agenda-driven form, it has become more difficult to promote projects on Twitter. But it remains the biggest soapbox in the town square, with thousands of people talking loudly about their projects every day. And, of course, there are ruthless algorithms that attack us with anger bait. How I remember the good old days, when tweets about page rates, cartoonist working conditions, wars about certain companies not paying freelancers, or just some random bad behavior by comics professionals seemed instantly Kick off a week of discussions.
Discussion on Twitter has pretty much dried up, but BlueSky isn’t really built for it…yet. There appears to be no algorithm; instead, people see posts from people they follow and react accordingly, a shockingly simple format that has been suppressed by most other social media platforms. Negativity has long been proven to drive more engagement than positivity, and traditional social media has taken this to heart.
BlueSky does not allow automated publishing – so media brands (including Beat) cannot just auto-publish. This is the worst way to get involved in farming, but when you don’t have a real social media person (like Beat), it’s your only solution. But the way BlueSky is set up has significantly slowed adoption by influencers and brands… which is probably a good thing. Very good thing.
So far, almost everyone who has been to Blue Sky Tours has found it to be a surprisingly pleasant place to be. Moderation tools are more powerful – you can actually cut off conversations that you and others don’t want to be a part of – and the culture tolerates widespread use of blocking. Of course, this has led to accusations of BSky being an “echo chamber” – as if those ED ANGER-like YouTube posts with hundreds of comments aren’t also echo chambers? ! !
But the echo chamber narrative does reflect the overall problem. For my part, I fully support civilized discussion, which has been the norm throughout the history of civilization. People with different opinions or perspectives are a part of life. But the name-calling, the open bigotry, the death threats, the rape threats, the isms, the trolling—all these are what I’ve been subjected to over the years on Twitter—and I don’t have time for tears. It’s all rude or wrong and I don’t want it, just like I don’t want someone scrawling on my bathroom wall. Block and move on.
I have been online for over 30 years. That doesn’t make me an internet elder, but it does make me a little older than some of the people reading this. I’ve seen many of the platforms I mentioned in the first paragraph come and go. The early days of the Internet were a place where anyone could post anonymously, which led to insults, name-calling, and trolling. To combat this, even early platforms like Compuserve, GENie, and AOL (yes, I know, I know) had moderators to keep discussions safe and focused. I can say without a doubt that the best platforms are those with the best moderation. Of course, people will always get angry and leave in anger complaining about their rights, but communities set their own standards, and just like every society has laws and customs, online societies need the same laws and customs to prevent Abuse.
(I know the above is a very simplified look at a long and complicated history, but this is a blog post and not a term paper. Please drop it in the comments.)
Now, BlueSky reminds me of early online communities organized around ICQ and even Usenet. It was nerdy and enthusiastic when the rules were still being discussed. (More assholes are sure to emerge, which will make the rules even tighter.) Will it be the huge promotional tool that Twitter was in its heyday? Probably not. I don’t think we will have a “universal platform” anymore.
Yes, I miss having general commentary on everything going on everywhere. When a gruesome murder was discovered on a street near me this summer, I quickly found the witness’s account on Twitter. While I was spending a cold Christmas holiday in Maine without heat or power, I could check the Central Maine Power Company’s Twitter account to see how much progress they were making in restoring power. These are useful, transformative services, but Twitter’s current ownership doesn’t value them. In its best days, Twitter was a live thread of memes, jokes, and danger. Mets Twitter is a perfect example of that wonderful summer of ’24…and maybe the last one.
For now, Comic Blue Sky is just a place for fun conversations with old friends…and new ones. Or see what people eat for lunch. Now, I’m happy with it. But it’ll be interesting to see how these new conversations impact the comics industry (which has a very symbiotic relationship with Twitter), unless the whole thing implodes and becomes one of the graves in the social media platform’s graveyard.
Of course, a lot of people are still on Twitter, I and comic beats and K-Comics Beat include. It is a drug that is too powerful for anyone to quit immediately. But the turkey was very cold and increasingly unappealing.
Additionally, you can embed Skeets in WordPress!
spanish moss swamp thing
— Francisco Francavilla (@ffrancavilla.bsky.social) 2024-11-17T23:24:46.235Z
Look at that! We’ve been unable to embed tweets here for months – not sure if this is a Twitter issue or a quirk of the WordPress installation, but it’s a pain in the ass… and one that no one is interested in fixing. (Elnor cut off WordPress API access more than a year ago.)
Anyway… exciting times, amirite? You can follow I, comic beats and K-Comics Beat On BlueSky – the latter two are a bit sparse, but…as we like to say, there’s more.
