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feels like people are more in their feelings and society has become even more self-centred so people reply on the basis of what they want to say not what they want you personally to hear because who cares about you there is no you really. although I've also been getting this off men irl for 30 years

In my reading of history, it tunlrns out a lot of people had some degree of aphantasia and other learning disabilities all along, books aren't good with their brains, and magazines as documentary were an abilfying infotech

One very annoying aspect of Bluesky is users who attribute to the platform the traits of some annoying users the platform simply tolerates as a matter of neutral policy.

I mean --- Low bar.

I think (hope?) this is a lot of what people are gravitating towards in moving away from traditional social media, aside from the part that's being sucked up by chatbots

Language Hat is a very good community that has also had productive research done on it unfortunately it's also hosted in the blog comments of a single increasingly elderly blogger, and I really don't want to imagine the fate of that community if anything significantly bad ever happens to that guy

It is frightening, but, agreed

We need a traffic light system, red for youngsters and " How very dare you" celebs, amber for mutuals only and green for people like me who love a bit of interaction and a natter!

I came to twitter as the most viable replacement for google reader (mainly because blogs were already dying) so reading first is my mental model. When I reply, it's mostly to make sure there is a paper trail of me being a fellow traveler in case there is some miscommunication in the future.

i think a lot about how much engagement i want on social media. I do tend not to read replies from accounts that don’t follow me. It has to do with the fact that i attract a fair amount of hostility because of certain stances i take. i tend to operate as if i were still on twitter.

Yay but also yikes

I generally agree.... With the exception of any replies to major news organizations and the vast fascination with Aaron Rupar.

I agree, and enjoy the thoughtful engagement, uniquely informed perspectives and spontaneous humor as it presents, amidst the rest. Probably because I find the world an ever interesting place.

For men yes

Yes, and yes.

oh no

The Well is much smaller than its glory days, but our Books conference comes pretty close.

Yeah, curated reddits like r/askhistorians are still superior because they're the only place for long-form responses from professionals.

Nah There's always a few too many redditors in there, even in the niche ones Them folks got like twelve jokes between em

I'm not sure how you'd design a system to encourage better behavior. I think it is better here because feed algorithms aren't trying to maximize emotional engagement the same way other networks do.

bsky is what social media was in the 2000s, before everyone's brain turned to oatmeal. We're the last survivors of the great endumbening.

It shows us that we actually have an expectation of how people should respond to social media posts and forum posts that is different from both one-on-one conversation and different from classic broadcast media.

I do find myself talking less with strangers here because, like you say, so many responses are just illiterate — weirdly phrased reiterations of what I just said or unnecessarily hostile in tone. It doesn’t feel “social,” it just feels like bots. Like we automated the “Debate Me” bros 😬

Yup. It was one of *those* Bluesky days yesterday. bsky.app/profile/mole...

... Yeah I can get behind that.

Guilty. Sorry.

Given how many of such posts are allegedly made by 50+yos, I don't think that's likely an adequate explanation. ("Grandpa" in profile, etc.) We've been teaching "speed reading" as aspirational for a long time, though, so maybe a similar issue.

I have had work conversations in this fashion. if I could remember the complete buzzwords list I would be unstoppable

I’d noticed that exact same seems-to-scan-for-key-words thing way back in the 1990s, on Usenet. No idea whether it seems more prevalent now because a greater proportion of people are doing it, or because there are just many more people online, or if it’s something in the design of the networks.