Let’s Drop In on the Sad Little Party Bluesky Is Throwing
What are the odds it's about to catch fire?
Nothing helps me understand American politics more than my habit of occasionally checking in on Fox News. Only by immersing myself in that atmosphere — like a king disguising himself as a pauper so that he can witness the true state of his kingdom — do things make sense. What the hell is Trump doing on trade? Part of it is that he’s striking these idiotic “deals” to get breathless (and often inaccurate1) coverage on Fox News. Why are there troops picking up trash in DC like a bunch of heavily-armed Webelos? Because on Fox News, DC experiences The Purge every day, while the truth is that DC (where I live) is a big city with a not-great-but-not-unusual crime situation, and we happen to also be home to the ‘72 Miami Dolphins of carjacking rings.
I’ve started checking in with Bluesky in much the same way that I do with Fox News. This helps me understand the disease that’s shot through the activist class like Cordyceps on The Last of Us. Bluesky is similar to Fox News in that it’s curated content for people who want to only encounter a single woldview. The big difference, of course, is that Fox News is a ratings juggernaut — Fox may be the cockroach-like organism that survives the cable TV apocalypse — while Bluesky is sagging. The post-election bounce that spawned a million “Could Bluesky Replace Twitter?” headlines has already worn off. People are debating what Bluesky’s future holds, so now seems like a good time to check back in. While I acknowledge that what follows is just my impressions from my feed, and therefore so unscientific that I’ll probably get a grant from RFK Jr.’s CDC, here’s what I’m seeing on Bluesky.