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Blue Sky Thinking

Not to make this sound like some portentous announcement, like a celebrity couple imagining that the wider world gives a fig for their marital status, but I have consciously uncoupled from Twitter.

It's been on the cards for a while. Ever since the world's strangest man, Elon Musk, bought it in what was the Worst Banking Decision since 2008, the entire place has been on the slide, his model of buying blue ticks and monetising clicks meaning that the most extreme, the most controversial voices were aggressively promoted, and normal discourse was largely drowned.

I'd watched in dismay as my feed grew ever more right wing, obsessed with small boats and trans issues, race and gender, and it seemed that no matter how carefully I blocked and curated, more screeching, permanently enraged right wingers were placed in front of me.

As a strategy for driving engagement, it's superficially clever. The instinct is to engage, to argue and refute, even the reasonable people I followed were quote-tweeting these morons, all "look what this arsehole is saying". The bile spread exponentially.

But, like all superficially clever ideas, it was profoundly stupid, because eventually most people go "fuck this" and decide it's not worth their time.

For me, that point came at the time of the riots, post the awful events in Southport. As a resident of Ormskirk, just down the road, it's difficult to actually convey the disgust felt locally that this horrific event was jumped on by a mix of lumpen white supremacists and coked up arseholes who were just along for the aggro, and Twitter played a huge part in fanning the flames. I couldn't in good conscience stay, my account's been silent since (I do still have it, hoping against hope for better days ahead, but, as Mrs Coastalblog regularly tuts, I do tend to hang on to things that have outlived their usefulness), particularly as Musk appeared to now be using the sight as a megaphone for his own increasingly deranged, conspiracist views.

I'd opened a Bluesky account when he first bought it, so I wandered over there, and I have to say, it's pretty great. It feels a bit more niche, a bit like the twitter of old, and it's refreshing to go onto socials and be intrigued, rather than enraged, I've rediscovered the joys of nuance, and the joy of posting something without a load of replies calling you a "Jew-lover cuck" or whatever it is those weirdoes trying to fight the culture wars are currently obsessed by.

It has its drawbacks, it ain't Twitter in terms of reach, and I do miss a lot of people I used to follow/was followed by, and it doesn't have that sense of "the news is breaking here" which is why twitter was such catnips for current affairs junkies back in the day. But it's a lot more peaceful, so I think I'm going to hang out there for a bit. If you wish to find me, I have a fairly easily searchable name, see you in a bit maybe.

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