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the thing about Bluesky and perhaps Bluesky’s furry presence specifically is that the culture here is basically positive and encouraging. If you are trying to learn to draw, for example, there is no algorithmic incentive to point to someone’s imperfect output and laugh or say how much it sucks ass

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Same. Sometimes that pics, sometimes that's digital art, sometimes that's streaming. But the thing that brings me the most joy is seeing so many wonderful people just living a good life, being happy online and being kind to others

My thesis is that being a tremendous asshole is basically how you get visibility on X The Everything App With 8K 5G AI because negativity equals engagement and engagement is king for whatever twisted form the algorithmic timeline takes over there. You are literally incentivized to be a bully.

So yeah it’s not thrilling to post like that here because it can’t go anywhere; you just get blocked because you’re an asshole. But people literally admit that they’re on X for the drama and toxicity because I guess that’s electrifying somehow. Personally I think those people are beyond help.

This website absolutely has problems with extraordinarily tiresome people and online mob behavior from certain corners but there is also evidence that positive cultural norms can organically arise and persist within subcultures here through mutual agreement and that’s really neat.

If incentivizing and amplifying negativity and toxicity is what it takes to grow a social media service then the entire idea is probably beyond redemption. But we somehow have a relatively nice culture here and if it still falls into the sea then at least it was a pleasant slide into irrelevance.