Friend Star. My space. Vine. Google+. Bebo. AOL.
Social media platforms come, go, and evolve. Because of the choices of its owners, Twitter/X, always a bubbling sour pit of heated opinions and instant slander, has become increasingly taken over by trolls and antis, with few if any guardrails. The signal-to-noise ratio is always low, making it an increasingly unpleasant place.
BlueSky is one of the Twitter alternatives that started when things started to fall apart and has been quietly booming for a while now. And over the past few days, Comics Twitter, a vibrant and adaptable community of creators, readers, and sellers, has largely folded its tent and moved to BlueSky. What this means is still up in the air…but so is everything else, so join the club.
Unlike some of the other candidates, BlueSky had solid engineering from the beginning and a friendly atmosphere that made people want to stay here. I’ve had an account since its launch (it’s Comixace on all platforms), and I mainly used it to post thoughts like “I just had lunch”, which I used to do on Twitter in the early days. They say shadowbans on Twitter don’t exist, but I’ve displeased the feed gods along the way, and despite having a seemingly solid 20,000 followers, my involvement is completely disgusting. It was. (Or maybe people just didn’t like what I had to say, but that’s always a possibility.)
BlueSky’s growth over the past week has been incredible. I’ve gained thousands of followers and I think I need to be careful what I say again because people will see it and react to it. Bsky attracts about 1 million users a day and has found it a hilarious, quirky place full of jokes, much like early Twitter. Of course, there’s some harsh commentary about elections, but it’s much less exhausting because there’s no army of blue-checked bots. The culture is very community-based, but as our user base reaches 19 million people and continues to grow, it’s expanding, testing, and morphing again.
And the very culture that Comics Twitter (and Wrestling Twitter, Mets Twitter, and all other Twitters) created may never return. Creators were already finding it much harder to promote their projects on Twitter over the past two years as the platform became more agenda-driven. Still, it was the biggest soapbox in the town square, as thousands of people shouted about their projects every day. And of course, relentless algorithms bombarded us with angry fodder. The good old days when Twitter wars over things like page fees, working conditions for manga artists, companies not paying freelancers, or random bad reviews from manga professionals could instantly turn into a week-long conversation. How will I remember that?
The discussion on Twitter is pretty much gone now, but BlueSky isn’t really built for that…yet. There doesn’t seem to be an algorithm. Instead, people see posts from people they follow and react accordingly. This is a surprisingly simple format that most other social media platforms have abandoned. Negative emotions have long been proven to cause more engagement than positive emotions, and traditional social media has kept that in mind.
BlueSky doesn’t allow automatic posting, so media brands (including Beat) can’t simply automate posting. This is the worst way to increase engagement, but if you don’t have an actual social media person (like Beat), this is the only workaround. However, the way BlueSky is set up has significantly slowed its adoption by influencers and brands…which may be a good thing. That’s very good.
So far, almost everyone who has visited Blue Sky has found it to be a surprisingly pleasant place. Moderation tools are much more robust and can actually shut down conversations you and everyone else don’t want to be a part of, leading to a culture that tolerates the widespread use of blocking. Of course, this led to accusations that BSky is an “echo chamber” – as if angry people aren’t an echo chamber too, like a tube channel with hundreds of comments?!??? !??!
But the echo chamber argument actually embodies the whole problem. As far as I’m concerned, I’m all for civil debate, as has been the case throughout the history of civilization. It’s part of life for someone to have a different opinion or point of view. But the slander, the blatant bigotry, the death threats, the rape threats, the desperation, the trolling, all these things I’ve been receiving on Twitter for years, I don’t have time for tears. You don’t want someone coming in and graffitiing your bathroom wall because these are rude or wrong. Block and move on.
I’ve been using the Internet for over 30 years. That doesn’t make me an internet guru, but I’m certainly a little older than some of the people reading this. And I’ve seen many of the platforms mentioned in the first paragraph come and go. The early internet was a place where anyone could post anonymously, which led to insults, abuse, and trolling. To combat this, early (yes, I know, I know) platforms like Compuserve, GENie, and AOL also had moderators to keep discussions safe and focused. Without a doubt, the best platform is the one with the best moderation. Of course, people are always going to get angry and run away shouting and tweeting about their rights, but communities set their own standards, and just as every society has laws and customs, so do online societies. similar standards are needed to prevent abuse.
(I know the above is a huge simplification of a long and complex history, but this is a blog post, not a term paper. Please write in the comments section.)
For now, BlueSky reminds me of early Internet communities organized around ICQ and Usenet. The rules are still being worked out, but it’s geeky and fanatical. (And I’m sure more assholes will come, which will strain the rules.) Will Twitter ever become the huge advertising tool it was in its heyday? Probably not. I don’t think there will ever be a “universal platform” again.
And yes, I miss the universal live commentary on everything happening everywhere. When a gruesome murder was discovered in my neighborhood over the summer, I was able to quickly find the witness’s account on Twitter. As Maine endured a frigid Christmas holiday without heat or electricity, you could check Central Maine Power’s Twitter account to see how far along they were in restoring power. These were useful and innovative services, but the current owners of Twitter don’t appreciate them. At its peak, Twitter was crackling with memes, jokes, and, of course, danger. The great summer of ’24 on Mets Twitter was a perfect example…and probably one of the last.
For now, Comics BlueSky is just a place to have fun conversations with old friends and new ones. Or maybe just to see what people had for lunch. That’s fine for now. But it will be interesting to see how these new conversations impact the comics industry, which has had a very symbiotic relationship with Twitter. Unless it all collapses and becomes one of the graves in the graveyard of social media platforms.
Of course, there are many people who still use Twitter, myself and comic beat and K-Comic Beat Included. It’s too powerful a drug to leave anyone cold. However, the turkey was so cold that it became less and less appealing.
You can also embed Skeets in WordPress.
Spanish Moss Swamp Thing
— Francesco Francavilla (@ffrancavilla.bsky.social) 2024-11-17T23:24:46.235Z
Look at it! I haven’t been able to embed tweets here for the past few months. I don’t know if it’s a Twitter issue or just a quirk of this WordPress installation, but it was a huge pain…and no one seemed to want to fix it. (Elno cut off WordPress API access over a year ago.)
Anyway…exciting times, right amirite? Follow Comicbeat and K-ComicsBeat on BlueSky. The latter two are a little sparse… but as we like to say, there’s more to come.
Something like this:
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