Being active on Bluesky has been such a nice feeling recently. A feeling that I've been missing on social media in a really long time.
I was always someone who needed social media. From my early days, I've had many friends who I would only stay in touch with using things like Myspace, Tumblr or Facebook. I made a lot of new friends when I was learning web development from people in mostly American forums and even nowadays, I have many friends that I have probably on seen once or twice in real life. Social media helped me stay connected.
And when Twitter came around, I was one of the early adopters. I think, I had my first account since early 2007. What I really loved about Twitter was its vibe compared the other platforms I was using during that time. It wasn't as content heavy as Facebook or Myspace or even Tumblr but at the same time, it also wasn't just direct messages like on MSN or ICQ. You could just chat into the void and people that were interested would join you.
There was a feeling of freedom. There was no crafting of words or messages, I could just be myself. And likeminded people would find you and engage with you. Sometimes, you built new friendships and sometimes even healthy rivals. But it was always a good feeling to be around on these platforms.
Social media has changed over the years though.
Every platform seems to be so full. Full of fake versions of people's lives, fake profiles and bots, fake messages and fake content. And if you don't participate that exact way, you were just left out.
Having to thinking about what you post, and when you post it and how often you should post took out all the good vibes from these platforms. Social media just became an RSS of ingenuine content that you follow. Even worse, you started seeing more and more content that you didn't even subscribe to.
Twitter was for long the place this was the least worst. But with its transition to X, it became the most toxic place. More bots, more spam, more content that was just tailored for numbers and engagement. It was really painful.
Social media was so bad that I had lost all desire to be active on these platforms. I would still consume silently but not really interact anymore. But not being active also meant that I lost touch with lots of people. I hadn't realized it but over the time, I had made more friends online on these platforms that I had in real life. And now, I was kind of losing them.
It made me really sad. So, I tried to come back on X multiple times. But it was just not working for me.
That's why I was glad when things like Mastodon, Threads and Bluesky emerged from all of this. I had high hopes in these new platforms and was hoping that one of them would supersede the old platforms.
While in the early days, all of them seem to have failed, nowadays, Blueskuy seems to be that space that I was yearning for.
It feels so fresh and innocent as a platform, bringing positive vibes and slowly bringing me back the feeling of freedom to be just myself.
It's this platform that makes me feel comfortable to write these thoughts up, put them on my blog and share them into the void without being worried about any numbers, engagement or whatever.
These early vibes are making me feel hopeful about this new space. I hope it stays this positive even as it grows. So that I can make new friends again and stay in touch with people.