X vs Bluesky
Is this the Tyson vs Holyfield fight of our age? God I hope not...
The election of Trump in November 2024 precipitated a sizable exodus of X users to the Bluesky platform. In the weeks after Trump’s election Bluesky quickly added millions of new users. It’s not clear that all these individuals left X1 (I joined Bluesky at the prompting of others, but remain on X as well), but this surge appears to have been motivated by dissatisfaction with Trump’s election. Exactly how migrating from X to Bluesky fixes this I’m not sure, although I suspect a combination of Elon bad! and just the desire to do something, anything, motivated many individuals.
The perception among some seems to have been that Bluesky is some sort of cordial, enlightened alternative to the hellscape that is X. But is it? I’ve been on both now for a couple of months and here are my thoughts.
I should preface this by noting that I cultivate my spaces on both platforms carefully. I make liberal use of mute and block, get notifications only from followers and use the “following” rather than “for you” tab on both. So, I have a pretty insulated experience. I never really minded Twitter and Elon2 doesn’t really get my blood boiling either way but was curious as to the Bluesky experience.
The first thing that’s evident is that there’s certainly a cultural divide between the platforms. If you want to hang out with liberal academics, Bluesky is the place. I’m not sure that’s a selling feature…even as a mainly liberal academic, whenever everybody is trying to outdo themselves for cultural worth it can start to feel a bit stifling. There’s definitely a blue vs red kind of competitive vibe, although I find X less red in the sense I imagine Truth Social to be, and more simply skeptical of far-less shibboleths.
But there feels like a kind of a class divide between the platforms as well. Put bluntly, Bluesky is the white collar/coastal elite space, whereas X is working class maybe with a few grognards thrown in. Bluesky is where you go to look down on the people who hang out on X. X is where you go to wave your fist at the sky.
Is Bluesky kinder than X? I dunno. I don’t really have bad experiences either place, but that’s also because of that cultivation I’ve done and having learned to (mostly) not get in dumb mud fights with highly motivated (that’s not a compliment) people in online spaces (and, yes, that includes many academics).
Yet, watching Bluesky have some kind of weird meltdown when journalist Jesse Singal joined has given me some pause. For those not in the know, Singal is famous (or infamous depending upon perspective) for reporting on detransitioners, or individuals who once identified as transgender, but later reversed course. This is a verboten topic in some corners of trans advocacy and promptly got Singal identified as Public Enemy #1 in some trans advocacy spaces. I’ve never quite understood why Singal elicits this level of furor…I don’t claim his writing is beyond debate3, but it’s a far cry from “literal genocide” or whatever. Yet Singal quickly became the #1 blocked person on Bluesky, experiencing many vile death threats and messages encouraging him to commit suicide. Sooooo…so much for that claim.
None of this is to say X is a gentle space. I don’t believe that for an instant. Because of my feed cultivation, I don’t see a lot of the worst stuff, but I don’t disbelieve it exists. I think part of the reason so many people are skeptical of social media is that it simply reveals how ugly we are inside. Kill the messenger and all that. I’ll admit I’ve been surprised to discover how many of my fellow academics are utterly lacking in critical thinking and eager to glom onto the next moral cause4. But learning this has been helpful for me.
As for engagement, I’d say engagement on X has dropped off noticeably. Yet, Bluesky feels like a graveyard. There’s still more excitement on X, which isn’t necessarily saying a lot. I give Bluesky a lot of credit for not throttling Substack, and mainly both platforms seem like free ways to promote my work, books, etc. (hint, hint…subscribe and buy books!)
Ultimately, I find myself increasingly bored with both platforms. Honestly, I’m not even sure why. I think maybe waking up in June 2020 and watching the whole world go insane it was nice to connect with some “heterodox” folks who seemed immune. In the years since, I’ve watched too many “heterodox” people go down their own paranoid rabbit holes or jump on the latest moral panics to stay too excited about that though.
Left out of this are the other platforms, of course. The kids will probably stay on Instagram or, if it’s not banned soon, TikTok. As an increasingly old dude, I’m surprisingly finding Facebook to be newly enjoyable. Here too, I mainly unfollowed people who were overearnest in using the platform to assure me they were on the right side of history and now it’s much better.
My shameful admission is: I kind of like the Facebook AI. Probably near half of my Facebook feed now is pictures of old New England homes, Space 1999 stills, Dungeons and Dragons and WWII tanks. I like looking at this stuff and it’s way more interesting than people parading around their virtue. Plus, Facebook is basically social media’s obituary page, and I’ve reached that age where the obituaries are interesting. Kind of like picking my vacation home by seeing where everyone else is going to stay.
Ultimately, the whole thing is starting to feel a bit dull. If anything kills social media, it will be that.
The question too will be how much of this is sustained. We’ve seen prior exoduses before to platorms like Mastadon, most of which seem to have been a waste of time.
It’s hard to stay too mad at the guy who entertains me by shooting rockets into orbit, which I can watch from my house.
I probably agree with him on more things than I don’t, but do tend to find him a bit too credulous, perhaps even snarkily so, of the “social contagion” hypothesis. To be fair, I suspect the rise in youth identifying as LGBT is a complicated issue and I don’t find myself terribly convinced by any “side’s” explanation as of yet. In part, this appears to be because everyone (arguably including Singal) has rushed to their favored explanation and camped there in unhelpful ways even though the data feels rather slender to me to support any one position.
I’ve probably been a bit harsh on academics in this essay. But one of my greatest disappointments has been learning how lacking in humility or curiosity so many fellow academics (not all to be certain!) have proven to be. But this disappointment is one born from love of what academia could be…perhaps something akin to watching a beloved friend die from addiction.