Forgotten Blue Sky

Today as I was looking through apps I noticed that Bluesky had been offloaded and that I had not used the app in weeks, possibly even months. The reason for this is simple. Social media went from being a social conversation between individuals towards a monologue from Influencers to normal people, and that one sided monologue is of no interest to me.

I never went to Twitter, Instagram or other network thinking, “I wonder what random strangers are doing today.” I always use social media to connect with human beings, not influencers. I want to connect, converse, and with time meet in person.

Twitter stopped being that years ago, and Instagram was destroyed when Facebook bought the side to push influencer BS onto normal people, destroying that community that we had once really appreciated.

I was scrolling through Twitter, now called X, and I noticed two things. People on Bluesky, X and Facebook, for the most part are no longer having conversations. They’re posting but I barely see any dialogue or conversation. Everyone is brainfarting into the wind, without expecting a dialogue, but more importantly, no one is looking to have a conversation. Without conversation, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other sites are just radio, publishing and community TV.

Conversations Rather Than Addictions

People loved to speak about social media addiction, and to make people who spent time on social networks like sick addicts with nothing in their lives to keep them busy. From the 90s though, right until 2007 and Twitter, online communities were about conversations between individuals.

The reason for which I don’t invest my time and energy into Bluesky is that from the start it pivoted towards making “influencers” visible, rather than building an online community. It’s that online community that I joined for. It’s that lack of online community that has be spending so little time on BlueSky.

The Strava Reversal

With Strava we shifted from being on Twitter and other sites for hours a day, in order to participate in enough conversations to build a sense of community, and eventually, after months or years, we would meet in person. Now, with Strava and Meetup, we don’t need to spend hours on twitter, Bluesky or other sites to find community.

We look at Strava and Meetup. We find events, turn up, and eventually become part of the core group. We might then have a back channel on Whatsapp but that’s secondary. The primary channels are IRL (In Real Life) and on Strava via kudo.

With the emergence of Social Media as a spectator sport, for lurkers, with no sense of community, it lost all of its appeal. That’s why I forgot about BlueSky for a while.