Bluesky Dreaming

I’ve had it with Elon Musk. Since his acquisition of the social networking site Twitter (sometimes known as X) in 2022, the South African billionaire car-maker and conspiracy nut has turned what was once a useful Web service into a haven for right-wing hatemongers and disinformation purveyors. His reprehensible embrace of convicted felon and sexual predator Donald Trump in last year’s U.S. presidential race, and his efforts ever since (as some kind of unelected co-president) to undermine our nation’s democratic processes, have turned many stomachs, my own included.

Other than by voting and by protesting (both collectively and singularly), there’s sadly little I can do to stop Musk’s destructive endeavors. But I don’t have to support them—and I would be doing so were I to remain a contributor to Twitter.

I joined Twitter years ago, together with Facebook and Google+ (the last of which shut down in 2019). Although I’m not a busy social-media user (I don’t post my favorite recipes or cute photos of cats), I thought those sites might help me to promote the latest additions to my Rap Sheet and Killer Covers blogs. Back then, Twitter was a relatively more responsible platform, willing to prevent or at least flag the dissemination of propaganda. I found it even brought some new readers to my blogs. However, Musk’s purchase of the site and his subsequent elimination of guardrails curtailed my interest. The last time I posted to The Rap Sheet’s X page was in April 2024, and I won’t be putting up anything else while Musk is in charge.

This week I debuted a new Rap Sheet page on Bluesky, a rival “microblogging service” that was launched in 2019 and has grown dramatically since Musk assumed control of Twitter. It claims to have more than 29 million users so far. That’s far fewer than the 106 million Americans said to spend time on X, but it’s still nothing to sneeze at. And visiting Bluesky doesn’t make me want to take a shower afterward. It’s actually very muck like pre-Musk Twitter, but with a more upbeat air, fewer trolls, and less political rancor. (There are still those pesky cat shots, though. They’re inescapable!)

Undoubtedly, there will be naysayers. People who contend that Musk and his agitprop machine simply cannot be beaten, and that alternatives on the order of Mastadon, Threads, Bluesky, and others will eventually lose their value as draws for dissenters. They may be correct. In the meantime, though, there’s plenty of space on the Internet for these services to take their shots at success.

I’ve posted only a handful of things on The Rap Sheet’s Bluesky page to date, mostly links to stories that have already appeared in the blog. As with every new toy, though, one can’t help playing with it, experimenting to see what it can do, so expect more from it in the near future. Thus far, the page has only 21 followers, a fraction of the 581 who were keeping track of the old Twitter page. But abandoning Musk in his hour of greed is well worth that loss!

Come join me, if you’d like!