Six years ago, I deleted my account on Twitter, where I had been fairly active for several years. It was never as fun or bonding as I hoped it would be. I was making the same flat jokes about current events and engaging in the same echo-chamber discussions of the agenda du jour as everyone else. I didn’t fully realize how wasteful it was until I quit. I never regretted quitting.

A few years later, I created a new account for my music project because I thought I had to in order to succeed as an artist. It had some utility: it helped me verify my profile on “Spotify for Artists”, which, I now believe, I never really needed either. Most importantly, now I realize that to make art fulfilling, I don’t have to succeed. At least, not in the sense that requires having an active Twitter account.

Later on, I registered on Mastodon because I like the general idea of decentralization, and I share the intention of breaking out of the algorithmic bubble. It turned out that a distributed, decentralized, general-purpose social network is still a general-purpose social network, and it still sucks.

Both Bluesky and Mastodon systematically recreated everything that made me quit Twitter. The very essence of extremely short-form writing makes any thoughtful discussion impossible, and it is the only kind of discussion I care about. Just like on Twitter, engagement numbers are the main observable metric of success on Bluesky, creating every incentive for the same kind of attention seeking, rage bait and partisan virtue signaling.

I have to admit, the culture of microblogging produces pretty good jokes, especially funny for insiders. People who enjoy following current events in real-time, like sports or elections, say microblogs are quite good for that. I trust them, but I’m not one of them. Sure, I like jokes, but, all things considered, it’s not worth it.

Bluesky is a Public Benefit Corporation, and it is being built on an open protocol, so, I know, it must be different. It doesn’t feel any different, though. It feels like one algorithmic bubble replaced by another, owned by exactly the same people who created the first one, and being presented as something radically different. It’s just as depressing but decentralized.

Of course, Bluesky PBC is VC-backed, so it will have to play the same playbook of growth at all costs that has already enshittified nearly every good thing online.

If you miss the old Twitter, you might enjoy being on Bluesky for some time. I don’t.