Bluesky Thinking

Twitter was my favourite social media platform but I am convinced that Elon Musk is deliberately attempting to ruin it as part of a bet or prank. Like the 'Brewsters Millions' gambit of having to lose it all to win even more or 'Trading Places' bet amongst a couple of old rich guys just toying with the fates of others. Please excuse the ancient movie references, just look it up kids.

Twitter has brought me so much over the years, information, laughs, surprises, piles of poker prizes, and at times a sense of community but it's become tainted and I want better.

While the verification system on Twitter has been well and truly destroyed, I suppose for the most part Twitter is much the same as it was before, you just have the constant threat of dumb changes being implemented under the guise of fighting bots before the changes are quietly undone, things like the limiting of tweets you can see, not being able to look at tweets unless you login and such. But with talk of further changes like requiring to submit government issued ID and selfies to access it, and a grade A moron at the helm, seems like there needs to be an alternative. 

I tried Mastadon when it got a surge of hype but it wasn't intuitive to use and perhaps more importantly it just didn't have what I wanted on the platform. I looked for people I knew from Twitter, nothing. I looked for poker, nothing. I looked for movies, nyeh... maybe a little. I looked for all the things I liked on Twitter but there wasn't much to go on, it seemed like a lot of hard work, so I ditched it.

Threads had MASSIVE potential and just instantly trashed the whole thing by being as unusable as Facebook. I was talking to someone about Facebook the other day, back in the day you would just post nonsense like "fell over a cactus" and that would be just grand, like thinking out loud for your friends and now it's a genuine struggle to even find anything a friend has posted. Do people like Facebook as it is now? It's a full on stream of stuff I've never liked, followed or subscribed to but it is quite well targeted and I have been tempted to watch some of the videos BUT I RESIST! that's what they want me to do, it's not what I want them to do. I digress, all Threads had to be was a chronological list of posts from the people you want to follow, sure throw in a few adverts, business and all that. But no, Meta didn't do that, despite having a bunch of former Twitter employees that Musk fired, they couldn't just recreate Twitter, could they?

So for a good chunk of Twitter stalwarts, Bluesky is perhaps the last great hope. There's not as many users, it doesn't have all the features we've grown accustomed to but maybe, just maybe, it's a return of the platform we want. With the invite only restriction on Bluesky entry, it felt like Bluesky was some hidden utopia. Having finally made it in, I was a little dissappointed. Like I mentioned before, it doesn't have all the features, it doesn't have as many users, it doesn't have the big businesses, and just like on Mastadon, there's not much in the way of poker content or other interests but it has grown on me and over the week or two I have finally replaced Twitter with Bluesky. 

I've realised if I can't find what I want on Bluesky, neither can other like minded people, so I'm going to have to help change that if I want that to happen. When others come to Bluesky and search for poker, I want them find it, so we'll see what happens!

You can find me at: https://bsky.app/profile/macguffin.bsky.social

And let me know if you need an invite code.