I had a "enjoy it while it lasts" mentality when it came to BlueSky. The tipping point finally came for Twitter, and a mass exodus occurred in their favor. The rest of my streamer friends were finally on a platform I kinda-sorta paid attention to. But I didn’t hold my breath.

Sure enough, the nail on the coffin was swift: within days of new users enjoying the new-to-them platform, Jesse Singal, known P.O.S., is not only welcomed on Bluesky– but has ties to Kiwifarms.

(If you have no idea how that’s bad news [I’m envious at your ignorance, but also, where have you been?]: KF is notorious for being a forum full of people that love to doxx, stalk, SWAT, and generally spend way too much of their time obsessing over people they don’t like. They’re most known for harassing transgender individuals.)

And…

People are still being declared overreacting about this?

But what’s been really getting me, is that people are staying anyway. I’m annoyed similarly that it took people this long to GTFO Twitter.

Now, I should hold nuance for those that feel like they don’t have anywhere else to go[1] (Anti-Blackness is global, and permeates the Internet) and for some people, it’s literally their business. And not everyone can just up and delete their account, I guess, or have time/energy/knowhow to just say "fuck it" and roll their own. Or, like, whoever. Whatever.

But…

We gotta do better, y’all.

I’ve come across so many others that articulated way better than I could about how I was feeling about this.

It’s the main idea of why the whole aspect of the "Indie Web," Web 2.0, The-Web-I-Grew-Up-On, has been my Roman Empire for the past year.

There’s alternatives, but unless it’s VC-backed no one really cares. It’s toxic to so many marginalized groups, but that’s where the community is. It harms the most vulnerable and the man behind the wheel is a fucking weasel, but that’s where all your followers are.

Who brings the community?

Who gets sacrificed the instant it’s no longer profitable to exploit their work?

Who suffers because people think Tolerance is still a good idea? (It’s not!)

It’s very likely that I’m salty because, well, I feel this boils down to yet again that trans people just aren’t important as comfort media and convenience. Cis folks wouldn’t stop clutching their Harry Potter books and that fucking game to show the bare minimum of solidarity, so I can’t say I’m surprised.

And yet, this still stings.

It’s not about connections and empathy anymore. It’s all about the numbers, and I’m an unimportant one.

So, like, whatthefuckever. Stay there if you want.

It’s business as usual.

[1] What? You thought I was going to recommend Mastodon? …Well, maybe, but with huge honking caveats and a narrow list of the instances and apps that I recommend. And let’s face it, we absolutely dropped the ball when Twitter first started fucking up (more). So, probably not.

We’ll need to carve out what next to do.