Social Media, Empathy, Caring About Other People?

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I feel like this is something I want to write about here on the Nova Prime, not because it’s a joyful topic, or something that makes me happy, but because it’s an overall larger issue that I think’s been carried over from a website that’s trained a lot of people to kind of, mentally … disregard others, at all expense, for their own personal gain, or comfort. Am I saying that Twitter has accidentally spawned masses of narcissists? Not really. I don’t think a website and its use for over a decade can alter someone’s brain chemistry. Or … can it?

But this is more about Bluesky, because, yes, again, we are seeing some undue angst and toxicity being slung toward the federated social network revolving around ActivityPub, or more exclusively, Mastodon, because a lot of these people don’t know about and don’t care to discover the rest of it. I’ve seen this happen pretty much every other day since Twitter had its last excursion, and then the more recent Brazilian excursion. People, basically, celebrating what they themselves believe to be a better platform, and for all intents and purposes, they can do that (even if that platform is a corporate owned entity no better than Twitter)! But, for whatever reason, it’s always followed by also dunking on people who are minding their own business on the Fediverse. For …

Reasons!

I want to preface this with something, before I dive into the biggest offenses I’ve seen: I was invited to join Bluesky back when the doors were still closed. Back when it was still an exclusive club, and being more familiar with Mastodon, than Bluesky, I was pretty used to … let’s say, people kinda more actually giving a shit about what they say, when they say it, and how they address others. Much to my dismay, I quickly learned that this is not the average Bluesky experience. Because I didn’t save any screenshots from when it happened, and I don’t feel like reliving every intricacy of what exactly went on, I’ll be brief, and explain as simply as possible what took place.

I started following people in and adjacent to the LGBTQ+ community, and, as you know, some people like to post with complete abandon, and zero regard. A “popular” account, attached to a, then, popular block and mute list creator, used a slur to describe people like her, and people like me, openly, just right on the timeline. Feeling kind of jolted by this, and largely due-in-part to some trauma I’ve had in the past, I asked if it was completely necessary to do that. Or, if some kind of warning could’ve happened (no, I am not talking about the word “Queer”, just so we’re straight on that).

This was, apparently, not the right thing to ask.

It was my first week on Bluesky, and I was dogpiled, I was harassed, I was mocked for being traumatized by past events that I had no control over, because of who I was, and how I presented myself to the world (you know, instances of events where harm did, or could have come upon my person).

I had multiple users jump directly into my notifications to make sure I knew that nobody cares about how I feel, about my feelings, and that my experiences mean nothing. That I am alone, and I have to deal with it myself, while others speak, and do as they please.

As you can probably guess, I was a mess around this point. I was kind of … reeling. Flashbacks, trauma, anxiety; Feeling like I’d just joined a social network absolutely full of sociopaths.

Flash forward a year, and both of those original accounts have been pushed off of the website, because, you guessed it: They’re both abusive people that were given too much benefit of the doubt.

Who could have guessed.

Now: Could I have avoided all of this by just unfollowing the offending account or accounts? Sure. But also I don’t think it’s a lot to ask that people take harmful things, and put them behind a warning. Which is something that usually happens on Mastodon, because, I guess, a larger number of Mastodon users care about other people more than your average Bluesky user?

I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s a good idea to generalize a whole website of people. But! Impressions were made, and set.

Now, here we are today. Another gaggle of people rejoicing at the growth Bluesky is experiencing due to X being banned in Brazil. Which is good! A website that is owned and operated by a corporate entity, and sponsor, needs growth in order to eventually make money. And, like clockwork, with all of that also comes the random dunking of people who use a much older federated network, that’s been around since the internet took off. You already know what I’m talking about, so we’ll just dive right into this, again (I posted about this on my Mastodon account, but I feel like it needed more picking apart).

As a lot of people who read what I write here probably already know, I’m very passionate about the deconstruction of centralized social media, and the corporate internet. So much so, that I have two machines that run Linux, one that runs MacOS, and none that run Windows. Most of my online activity is on some kind of open-source software, and the corporate tech I do interact with is … limited, and usually only for the benefit of what I create, or compose, or make.

Now, I use Linux, and I am by no means a Linux genius, so when I see someone talking about compiling a Linux kernel, I’m not entirely sure how they’d accomplish that. I’ve never done it, nor ever considered it. But! I am under the impression that you need some knowledge of the C programming language, and its compilers.

Imagine saying that you need a degree in computer science to choose a Mastodon instance, and to make sure you’re choosing one with a competent moderation policy, and fully meaning that, wholeheartedly, with a straight face. And to say that in response to someone, basically saying that, your onboarding process for a social network needs to be entirely smooth, without friction, or people will immediately abandon it and just give their data back to their corporate overlords.

I don’t want to believe that a mass majority of people are so intellectually lazy that they’d refuse to spend sixty seconds looking at the splash page of a Mastodon instance and going, “Hmm. Okay, so they ban nazis and they’re okay with gay and trans people, awesome!” I do want to believe that this is just a popular narrative among people who have little specific agendas in mind, but that’s probably too conspiracy theorist to even begin speaking about.

Like I said in my Mastodon post on this topic, leaving Twitter behind is already creating friction in your social media existence. That a little more is too much, is just ridiculous. People are more happy to jump directly into the arms of another corporation, because all they have to do is write down a username and a password and then forget about it?

Nah, you can’t be serious, my guy.

But, this all isn’t even the biggest offense in what’s essentially a huge thread of people dunking on the fediverse, again, for no reason (I would link to it, but I honestly deactivated my mainline Bluesky account after seeing all of this and I have no interest in visiting their domain, again).

This. This freakin’ attitude again.

“Other people’s feelings aren’t my problem! I don’t care about THEM?! GOD.”

Do you know how difficult it is to push the “CW” button on Mastodon, and then type your post?

It’s not hard.

It’s also not hard to consider other people when you’re going about your daily life and making decisions.

It is not hard. You cannot convince me that it is.

All this continued attitude from Bluesky proves to me, is that Mastodon users … somehow care more about the people around them, than maybe your average user on Bluesky. Which is fucked up. Because the Fediverse has its own issues with nazi instances cropping up at random, and abusive people block evading, and so on, and so forth. But to think it’s a DUNK, that on Bluesky, you’re not expected to express empathy for others.

Guys.

Guys, I think I’m gonna barf into my shoes, and then piss my pants.

I’m just utterly confused about how we’ve gotten to this point. to this crossroads, where two different websites are having fights with each other, and one of the main points of argument is that … it’s too hard to care about other people.

I dunno, fellas, maybe I was right in the first paragraph.

Needless to say, I don’t really want much to do with Bluesky, and I’m sure there are perfectly normal and perfectly fine people on the website. But, for the past year this has been a trend, an attitude, that I have only seen coming from Bluesky.

That’s a red flag.

A continuous, never-ending red flag, that just keeps waving and waving.

I can’t wait for the “I deleted my Bluesky account today” posts that will inevitably begin cropping up across the Fediverse. Because, federated social media and the federated internet, is the future, whether Jay at BSKY wants to acknowledge it, or not.

Kay, I’m done.