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I have never used Twitter. Mostly, because I have read Amusing Ourselves to Death. I knew that absolutely no good could come of engaging in 140 characters.
As the platform evolved (threads! 280 characters!), I was occasionally tempted, but never tempted enough. It sometimes seemed like a place where interesting people were having interesting conversations--but with the caveat that, in terms of depth, insight, and "popularity contest" dynamics, Twitter is like attending a very large, very angry high school. Sure, you have some wild conversations at your lunch table, but is it really worth the cacophony? The kibbitzing? The sophomores?
The amount of coordinated astroturfing and, admittedly, occasional not-just-astroturfing I've seen for Bluesky in the last week is quite sufficient to ensure that I will not even dip a toe into it. I think their current marketing is clearly intended to capitalize on the current perception that it is Truth Social for Leftists.
Further strengthening everyone's filter bubble will surely have no negative knock-on effects whatsoever.
Social media is an interesting case-study in "This is a thing everyone knows is bad, its structures are bad, and yet we do it anyway". A perfect example of a coordination problem, where due to competing interests no one actually exits the game, because there's just too much social consequence to exiting.
While most readers of my comment would assume I ascribe the detachment from reality that X is to Elon, it's not entirely true. Having watched Twitter's degradation from the early days, it was a blue-coded firehose of shit that went from being able to traverse in a sensible way to randomly interspersing bullshit regardless of how recent it is, to get you to click and spend more time on it.
So yeah, your ability to stay away from Twitter/X is to be lauded, and I make no excuse for my own bad social media habits, even if they amount mostly to browsing various hobby groups.
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I think it is also rage against Elon because Trump won and Elon obviously played a role in it. I think democrats hate Elon more than Trump.
Elon infuriates a certain sort of blue. I don't know that it's worse than Trump but it's pretty strange to see seemingly smart people go rabid.
I think it's just that we don't notice anymore when people claim they're superior to Trump and would do better with his daddy's money. It's been said for so long.
People who harp on about this with Elon come across like Thunderf00t; just pathetic and bitter. He presses all sorts of ideological buttons too what with being a billionaire who influences politics (filling the Koch bros. niche for leftists) and constantly signal boosting DR stuff with "!!" but, like Trump, I think it's impossible to psychologically digest that this juvenile-posting piece of shit is actually influencing the country.
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I think the hate of Elon is definitely fresher than that of Trump. I'm not sure it's necessarily greater in intensity.
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