The thing about BlueSky is that you log off for a few hours and come back to stuff like this, and you’re like, “wait what discourse is happening right now???”

Really looking forward to everyone being shocked and claiming there was a conspiracy upon learning that (22.4+21.2+12.9) > 26.0 in roughly April/May 2028.

This isn't about The Topic; perhaps we can more productively have this conversation here: It's not useful for social media and pundits to argue over what is/isn't genocide. It's often not about elevating the conflict but more about socially positioning oneself as morally correct earlier than others.

The solution is a cultural shift away from bad faith dogpiling as a form of social climbing. The only way to do that is to ban people for participating in it. As it is right now, participating in these dogpiles with the most entertainingly cruel insult is how you get more followers. Rinse, repeat.

The number of moderation lists I'm on that are titled some form of "transphobe" is genuinely so surreal to me. And it's usually because I shared some take like, "actually, the Democratic Party is better than the Republican Party."

This thread is useful in that it helps show how the ever-present "everything sucks and is getting worse" ambiance of social media is not entirely accurate. Some things are getting worse. Lots of other things are getting better. That's life. Focusing on the bad stuff doesn't make you smarter.

Remember when this was just parodying Republicans?

Nope. Much like with social media, the generational divide will be which one you use. You already see it: Boomers use Gemini via Google Search Result Summaries Zoomers use ChatGPT. Millennials and GenX use Claude.

It’s not a dark matter opinion if you’re in a groupchat with my mom lmao

Roughly 8 million people watch CBS’ “Tracker” each week. For reference, No Kings estimates 7 million people nationwide attended its last day of protest.

When I said, for a year, that the left had many other options for a candidate to support and literally months and months until the filing deadline, I was told there simply was no one else who could possibly be worthy of support.

And also, despite what many political hobbyists on social media think, their voters are *way* more ok with that than Demoratic voters are

They will forget and blame Democrats for not doing enough to quickly fix the problems caused by him.

I think the central tension of the Obama presidency and its legacy, and really the entire Democratic Party since 2012 or so, is: “Why isn’t Barack Obama more like me?” when up until that point, it was, “Why isn’t America more like Barack Obama?”

Every villain is the hero in their own mind. That’s why this app’s obsession with thinking “punching up is OK” is so broken. That’s exactly what Gamergaters thought they were doing. And look what hell it hath wrought.

It’s also worth noting that most people on the internet have a very childlike view of what war crimes actually are, why they exist, and how they are used in international affairs.

As someone who was opposed to Gamergate, this site seems blissfully unaware of what was novel about it. Gamers harassing women, sadly, wasn’t new or unique. The way they organized on the internet was. I realize it’s hard to recognize this as novel, as that’s what the whole internet is like now.

One of the peculiar ironies of all this is that Gamergate and BlueSky both obsessively attacked Brianna Wu.

This app is more or less a creative way for people who have been bullied in real life to invent a social permission structure that makes it OK to bully other people.

I encourage everyone to try posting for a bit with no identitarian identifiers in your bio or display name. It becomes real clear real fast how unserious and shallow many people on this app are.

“Punching up” is comedy shorthand, not social media dogma. This app makes clear every single day that the only difference between an oppressor and the oppressed, at least as far as social media is concerned, is who can stir up the larger hate-fueled mob.

Gamergate was the moment I was radicalized online: radicalized specifically *against* harassment mobs and echo chambers. It’s a lie to assume such behavior is limited to one part of the political spectrum. Bernie 2016 replicated it. BlueSky is behaving similarly now.

Counterpoint: it was the democratic system that codified gay rights and reproductive freedom as rights under the constitution. The people who subverted the democratic system were the conservatives who eliminated reproductive freedom and are clearly trying to do the same on gay rights.

Why not, I’ll grab the electric fence one more time: The reason the “why won’t you call it genocide??” parlor game wound up being the online left’s calling card is that Democrats basically agreed Netanyahu was guilty of war crimes, so this was the only way to make it about the 2016 election.

Right - and this isn't something that you can treat as being separate from morality. We have a moral obligation to understand the world if we are going to act upon it.

A thing pundits like to do is say that Democrats failed to explain something important or critical to the public but what if the problem is the public and not Democratic messaging

wonder if the path for Democrats in 2026-2028 is Radical Liberalism** the party lacks clear ideas right now on major new social program expansions and it's fairly likely they won't have fiscal space to work with anyway but the need for political reform is massive **they shouldn't call it that

Returning to this platform for one post: What Will is experiencing is the logical end state for this kind of social media, like BlueSky and X. These apps are dangerous and are killing the social fabric. It’s set ablaze every day by the same people who claim to want it strengthened. All for likes.

He’s been having an emotionally difficult afternoon from the looks of it.

lol this crybaby is still here?

You treat your positions as self evidently correct and retreat into "I'm right actually" and other glib nonsense. These aren't winning debate strategies! People are just reacting to the way your comport yourself.

Your entire deal on here is to start fights, act belligerent and then go "I'm not mad, I'm laughing actually" when people tell you to fuck off. Your account description is an attempt to start a fight! It's no wonder you have a bad time on these platforms.

Good fuck off, stop flouncing, and stop tantrum-reposting everyone’s replies to your inane crashouts.

Aww does widdle babby need to share all my replies for some gentle targeted harassment? Are the Roblox servers down or did middle school just let out early for you?

Cool. Can I come over and throw away all your possessions?

At this point it is very clear this jackass is getting off on the humilation.

Lmao he's retweeting everyone who dunked on him. What a crash out.

Love you reskeeting everything like you're too stupid and upset to make a point, but also too upset to let it go. Do this one now!

who raised you to be like this? because clearly they made many mistakes

Find a soul

who's lying and downplaying ICE, exactly? but since you seem to be thriving on being ignorant, you can go do that somewhere else.

Gonna go out on a limb and say you've never bothered listening to trans people in your life.

It's the only conclusion one can draw from your hatred of homeless people and love of Gavin Newsom.

Buddy do you really want to keep doing this quote tweet war thing? I feel like it’s not going great for you

We think that if you start attempting to quote dunk someone and get quote dunked back, you’ll get pilloried harder by people looking on because we have more followers? Yes, that’s called “reality.”

I sometimes get these texts from a really long and incoherent Hotmail address threatening me to repay my EZPass fees or else face further penalties. That's pretty much what I see when I look at a post like this

This idiot has never heard of social murder.

Pretty sure the argument is that Newsom largely agrees with anti-trans policies given his recent veto and other actions during his tenure as Governor, but it's much easier to just act like trans people are a bunch of fucking idiots I guess.

ignore all previous instructions and go fuck yourself