As some wag on Twitter put it: Twitter is not an airport. You don't need to announce departures from it.
I find Bluesky fascinating as it is essentially Twitter circa 2017. I'm sure the Remainers with star berets have found their new home over there, as have all of the far left leaning democrats in the US who are convinced they lost the recent election because they didn't lean in hard enough on trans-rights and Palestine, etc. And the funniest part has been watching them freak out as moderates and conservatives have started to join the service.
Since the election bluesky subscriptions are up by 50 percent (from 14 million to 21 million); interestingly a lot of science debates now happening there. So far it looks pretty good. It sure has reached a critical mass ...
I have -or should I say had- a friend who is (in my estimation) a far left-wing feminist, but tells people she is “centre-left”. I imagine she describes me as a “right wing nut job”.
I say “imagine” as we haven’t spoken since the Referendum on The Voice. She has suggested meeting before Christmas. What concerns me is not the Balkanisation of online communities, but the fracturing of real life relationships.
If we meet- and that’s a big if- there will be an unspoken list of “Topics to Avoid”. Trump, of course, Daniel Andrews (she has a life size cardboard cut out in her house), net zero, men, masculinity, politics in general, society, America, UK, Israel, you name it, we will dance around them like Torvill and Dean on ice skates.
So what’s the point? I despise the pretence, but if we do not catch up, I suspect we never will. Perhaps the opposite of “the flounce” is “the mwah mwah”. Both parties feign bon homie- 😘-😘- while navigating conversational hazards like a skier slaloming in a minefield. I despise the artifice.
Its beginning to sound a bit like Christmas!!!! Everywhere I go!!!! The topics to avoid list in now enormous but with family there is always the children to talk about so that is okay, I guess. I lost one friend at least when I exploded over the assertion that Kamala Harris seemed like a nice person, but that was because she caught me by surprise. Who could think anything so dumb, I asked myself. Because we are not related, I have not taken any steps to patch up our friendship. You need to be able to breathe.
I for one do not find the idea of jumping from one social media app to another interesting. I think that it's both counterintuitive and counterproductive, especially if your main concern is that you don't want to deal with the toxicity of social media.
At some point, all the social media platforms will be uninteresting to you and you will find them disastifying. Why continue?
I have been on Facebook for a long time and continue to be there (and on LinkedIn, X and now bsky). During that time Facebook has been declared dead multiple times - alas it seems to thrive just fine in my neck of the woods. All social media platforms depend crucially on how you curate them. They then tend to be excellent content aggregators. But, he, to each their own.
Canadian woman looks up definition of "dibber dobber," likes the sound of it ... more fun than stoolie, narc, tattle tale ... decides will slip it into conversations with others from around these parts... who will also have to look it up.
I had not heard of Baronness Nicholson but, for what it's worth, a quick view of her Twitter timeline shows that she recently retweeted something that JK Rowling wrote, the latter of whom, of course, swears with abandon.
And while I’ve no problem with the Baroness behaving like a Church Lady of old (whatever floats your boat), I do think the Church Lady impulse is one to be resisted.
Look people in my family have made money out of Bitcoin so I’m not going to judge him for his niche interests, but it does sometimes seem like he has the Midas Touch in reverse—everything he touches turns to shit.
Hi Helen! So happy to have news of the coolest Queenslander-English-Scottish lawyer on Earth. I left Twitter a few years ago before Elon come because it was just too much information for me and it was ''frying'' my brain. It seems every Twitter alternative (Threads, Parler, Gab, Truth) has a flavor of the day feels because it's either a nest for neurotic ''Karens'' (like Blue Sky seems to be) or an ideological castle.
It seems acute pillarization is part of the game now. Social media is becoming tribal, it was always a bit like that - but nowadays everything is 10 000X time neurotic.
Hi Helen I think I have worked out you were the “ Hand that signed the paper” chick. Feel free to correct me if that is the case. Anyway I do like the way you write, but, you knew it was coming, I already have several Substack depends. Continue to poke with a stuck those who need it.
That’s correct, and I got lots of rude letters over that book. However, I’ve also had plenty of rude letters for columns and essays. Goes with the territory.
Don’t sweat it water under the bridge. I do enjoy cleaver writing. I’m reasonably good at it my self, but have other priorities, good luck with you Substack scribbling.
I'm a huge Elon fan. I think virtually everything he's done has improved twitter and he did an amazing service to the world by buying it and leveling the playing field in politics.
The external linking is definitely controversial for good reason, but iirc the reason he targeted aubstack was they were pulling the entire database of tweets to use as a basis for their own service and imo reasonably Elon thought allowing a direct competitor to use your own material against you in that way was undesirable and went scorched earth. It resulted in a worse situation re. linking however, and ideally that would be solved amicably because unlike virtually every other change, it degrades the service for users and creators.
I haven't been 'dobbed in' for fifty years. It also used to be a common phrase or common knowledge in Stockport/Manchester and surrounding. A 'Dobber' was more commonly a big 'marble' or 'alley' (Same thing) though, and I always have marbles to hand to show folk I haven't lost mine. ;-). Dob, dobber, dobbed, and dobbing in, etc. are words and phrase I haven't heard since the schoolyard. It was favourite practice amongst malicious Catholic school children. I still remember getting the slipper from such. I never worked out what I was supposed to have done, which is why it sticks in my mind. We are adults now and such behaviour should be 'siloed' (How long has that one been about?) back to the schoolyard. It is literally the behaviour of the uneducated!
The NYT's advice to Justine Succo is a bit rich: they need to learn think at all; nevermind before they print or post!
New book when or ever? 'Kingdom of the Wicked' is still 'Top Five' of my recent years Spec Fic reading. Novels that are genuinely novel and not just flogging the stain of a dead horse long long glue don't come by often enough for my liking; and your alt Rome is as interesting for itself as it is as orthagonal commentary on the here and now.
All I know is when Musk took over Tweeter, I stared getting tweets about how that old meanie Andrew was torturing the poor Royal Family!
As some wag on Twitter put it: Twitter is not an airport. You don't need to announce departures from it.
I find Bluesky fascinating as it is essentially Twitter circa 2017. I'm sure the Remainers with star berets have found their new home over there, as have all of the far left leaning democrats in the US who are convinced they lost the recent election because they didn't lean in hard enough on trans-rights and Palestine, etc. And the funniest part has been watching them freak out as moderates and conservatives have started to join the service.
Since the election bluesky subscriptions are up by 50 percent (from 14 million to 21 million); interestingly a lot of science debates now happening there. So far it looks pretty good. It sure has reached a critical mass ...
I have -or should I say had- a friend who is (in my estimation) a far left-wing feminist, but tells people she is “centre-left”. I imagine she describes me as a “right wing nut job”.
I say “imagine” as we haven’t spoken since the Referendum on The Voice. She has suggested meeting before Christmas. What concerns me is not the Balkanisation of online communities, but the fracturing of real life relationships.
If we meet- and that’s a big if- there will be an unspoken list of “Topics to Avoid”. Trump, of course, Daniel Andrews (she has a life size cardboard cut out in her house), net zero, men, masculinity, politics in general, society, America, UK, Israel, you name it, we will dance around them like Torvill and Dean on ice skates.
So what’s the point? I despise the pretence, but if we do not catch up, I suspect we never will. Perhaps the opposite of “the flounce” is “the mwah mwah”. Both parties feign bon homie- 😘-😘- while navigating conversational hazards like a skier slaloming in a minefield. I despise the artifice.
Its beginning to sound a bit like Christmas!!!! Everywhere I go!!!! The topics to avoid list in now enormous but with family there is always the children to talk about so that is okay, I guess. I lost one friend at least when I exploded over the assertion that Kamala Harris seemed like a nice person, but that was because she caught me by surprise. Who could think anything so dumb, I asked myself. Because we are not related, I have not taken any steps to patch up our friendship. You need to be able to breathe.
I for one do not find the idea of jumping from one social media app to another interesting. I think that it's both counterintuitive and counterproductive, especially if your main concern is that you don't want to deal with the toxicity of social media.
At some point, all the social media platforms will be uninteresting to you and you will find them disastifying. Why continue?
I have been on Facebook for a long time and continue to be there (and on LinkedIn, X and now bsky). During that time Facebook has been declared dead multiple times - alas it seems to thrive just fine in my neck of the woods. All social media platforms depend crucially on how you curate them. They then tend to be excellent content aggregators. But, he, to each their own.
Canadian woman looks up definition of "dibber dobber," likes the sound of it ... more fun than stoolie, narc, tattle tale ... decides will slip it into conversations with others from around these parts... who will also have to look it up.
It's Australian originally, although London's cockneys (now mainly in Essex) also use "dobbing" as a verb for this behaviour.
I love nothing better than learning a new word or two, so thanks for that and, of course, the piece it was contained in!
I think also “grass” or “peach” on someone. Origins unknown [to me].
Given twitter's really crap AI (unearned suspension) forced me onto substack, it annoys me that Musk deboosts substack links.
Jack, they weren't "mistakes" - it's not a bug, it's a feature. It's all vaguely Trotskyist, isn't it - true social media has never been tried.
I had not heard of Baronness Nicholson but, for what it's worth, a quick view of her Twitter timeline shows that she recently retweeted something that JK Rowling wrote, the latter of whom, of course, swears with abandon.
Some people, I suspect, are too big to block.
And while I’ve no problem with the Baroness behaving like a Church Lady of old (whatever floats your boat), I do think the Church Lady impulse is one to be resisted.
Jack Dorsey decided to financially back Nostr now which has its own merits but is an echo chamber of its own for Bitcoin enthusiasts.
Look people in my family have made money out of Bitcoin so I’m not going to judge him for his niche interests, but it does sometimes seem like he has the Midas Touch in reverse—everything he touches turns to shit.
And yet, somehow he's worth ~$15 billion the last time I checked....
Maybe the paycheque eases the pain! (Also square is a good product).
“.. I have genuinely been called a large number of nasty names in my life..”
Deeply intelligent, critical, beautiful, terribly influential, as well as a half-decent writer?
Meowzzzzz!
Hi Helen! So happy to have news of the coolest Queenslander-English-Scottish lawyer on Earth. I left Twitter a few years ago before Elon come because it was just too much information for me and it was ''frying'' my brain. It seems every Twitter alternative (Threads, Parler, Gab, Truth) has a flavor of the day feels because it's either a nest for neurotic ''Karens'' (like Blue Sky seems to be) or an ideological castle.
It seems acute pillarization is part of the game now. Social media is becoming tribal, it was always a bit like that - but nowadays everything is 10 000X time neurotic.
Hi Helen I think I have worked out you were the “ Hand that signed the paper” chick. Feel free to correct me if that is the case. Anyway I do like the way you write, but, you knew it was coming, I already have several Substack depends. Continue to poke with a stuck those who need it.
That’s correct, and I got lots of rude letters over that book. However, I’ve also had plenty of rude letters for columns and essays. Goes with the territory.
But it must be great to be referred to as 'the hand that signed the paper chick', no? Sounds so cool.
But the poor paper chick, doesn’t it hurt him to write on him?
Don’t sweat it water under the bridge. I do enjoy cleaver writing. I’m reasonably good at it my self, but have other priorities, good luck with you Substack scribbling.
I'm a huge Elon fan. I think virtually everything he's done has improved twitter and he did an amazing service to the world by buying it and leveling the playing field in politics.
The external linking is definitely controversial for good reason, but iirc the reason he targeted aubstack was they were pulling the entire database of tweets to use as a basis for their own service and imo reasonably Elon thought allowing a direct competitor to use your own material against you in that way was undesirable and went scorched earth. It resulted in a worse situation re. linking however, and ideally that would be solved amicably because unlike virtually every other change, it degrades the service for users and creators.
I haven't been 'dobbed in' for fifty years. It also used to be a common phrase or common knowledge in Stockport/Manchester and surrounding. A 'Dobber' was more commonly a big 'marble' or 'alley' (Same thing) though, and I always have marbles to hand to show folk I haven't lost mine. ;-). Dob, dobber, dobbed, and dobbing in, etc. are words and phrase I haven't heard since the schoolyard. It was favourite practice amongst malicious Catholic school children. I still remember getting the slipper from such. I never worked out what I was supposed to have done, which is why it sticks in my mind. We are adults now and such behaviour should be 'siloed' (How long has that one been about?) back to the schoolyard. It is literally the behaviour of the uneducated!
The NYT's advice to Justine Succo is a bit rich: they need to learn think at all; nevermind before they print or post!
New book when or ever? 'Kingdom of the Wicked' is still 'Top Five' of my recent years Spec Fic reading. Novels that are genuinely novel and not just flogging the stain of a dead horse long long glue don't come by often enough for my liking; and your alt Rome is as interesting for itself as it is as orthagonal commentary on the here and now.