Josh, You win the award for the metaphor of the year. A containment dome for the most joyless progressive scolds is the best description of what BlueSky has turned out to be.
I live in the left-wing bubble that is San Francisco and over the years my own Twitter feed didn’t show me any of the far-left views you write about here.
It’s no secret that social media algorithms show you more of whatever you click on. It’s also no secret that extreme voices are the loudest, which conservative politicians are dealing with right now with MAGA.
If what you say about the DC staffers is true, then the real problem is that 1) they made no effort to leave their own bubble, or 2) they didn’t have the courage or desire to prioritize more moderate views.
It’s really not that hard to read a survey of the priorities of swing-state voters, so I have to assume it’s easier for them to blame Twitter for their own lack of leadership. That’s what the last several years have felt like to me.
This is all true, and I hope democratic staffers will learn the collective lesson that the loudest voices on the internet are not a proxy for their constituents and that their previous strategy of capitulating to them was ruinous in every way. But in case these staffers remain dumb and do not learn that lesson, I do take solace in Josh's point that they are now receiving far less static from the whining masses that populate BlueSky and are now much less likely to mistakenly give them sway.
This is very true. I maintain an anon account on Bluesky and occasionally I check in to see what Taylor Lorenz, Alejandra Caraballo and Kara Swisher are posting about and it's like it's always 2020 over there. Bluesky is an amen-corner, everyone agrees, there's not much debate and they spend a lot of time congratulating themselves on how clever they are. But as Josh wrote here, they have effectively siloed themselves from popular opinion and that's a good thing for all of us and for the nation too.
Thank you for posting! Please post more. Also, as someone who finds frequent publicly broadcasted idiocy discrediting, I'd love to know why anyone takes Taylor Lorenz (or Bari Weiss, for that matter) seriously.
While I appreciate Josh trying to redefine what bubble are about, he still repeats the fundamentally flawed criticism as BlueSky as a bubble.
"The problem with a 'bubble' is that it prevents the people inside from accessing the information on the outside."
Yeah, that's the theory. But:
1) it presumes that the alleged bubble is not permeable—when people post screen shots from other social media platforms and links to news stories from across the web. Heck, the bubbles we all imagine are permeable to light so....well, it's a bad metaphor.
2) there is nothing about bluesky that keeps anyone there from having and checking other social media accounts, themselves. I still have my twitter/x, threads and mastodon accounts.
Surely, some people do not check other social media accounts but I cannot imagine that people are not seeing screenshots and/or links to other platforms.
So, perhaps it is time to retire the term "bubble," at least as applied to parts of the Internet.
The biggest problem with this is that containment has been breached before; Tumblr was the original containment dome, and it didn't hold.
(But also, leftists are not "liberals, but moreso"; they're built different (worse). The important firewall isn't between liberals and everyone else, but between leftists and liberals.)
For most of us BlueSky and Twitter act as a functional firewall between normal people and politicians/journalists/celebrities/influencers. Social media itself is a bubble where everyone in the bubble talks to each other and thinks social media is where real things happen. It's true that there are crazy liberal people on Twitter and BlueSky. But it's not true that they ever had any policy influence on Democratic politics, particularly at the national level. But it's also true that people like Josh Barro are able to draw easy associations. It's not hard to make someone look stupid by photoshopping them into a picture with stupid people. I'm a liberal and all my friends are liberal. When we get together, we talk about our kids and get drunk and tell dirty jokes and drive fast cars and gossip about the neighbors and eat apple pie.
It’s not clear to me that the Bluesky containment dome will not spring some leaks during the primary season. I agree that it’s helping the Democratic Party now. Not sure that’ll continue to be the case in 2027 or 2028 when they come back to X after their self imposed exile.
We already have a NYC mayoral race that has leaked from blue sky to being second in the race. I guess losing doesn’t really matter but could a campaign like this have negative effects on other Dem campaigns if running at the same time in other cycles?
Josh, You win the award for the metaphor of the year. A containment dome for the most joyless progressive scolds is the best description of what BlueSky has turned out to be.
Blaming Twitter/Bluesky is an odd take.
I live in the left-wing bubble that is San Francisco and over the years my own Twitter feed didn’t show me any of the far-left views you write about here.
It’s no secret that social media algorithms show you more of whatever you click on. It’s also no secret that extreme voices are the loudest, which conservative politicians are dealing with right now with MAGA.
If what you say about the DC staffers is true, then the real problem is that 1) they made no effort to leave their own bubble, or 2) they didn’t have the courage or desire to prioritize more moderate views.
It’s really not that hard to read a survey of the priorities of swing-state voters, so I have to assume it’s easier for them to blame Twitter for their own lack of leadership. That’s what the last several years have felt like to me.
This is all true, and I hope democratic staffers will learn the collective lesson that the loudest voices on the internet are not a proxy for their constituents and that their previous strategy of capitulating to them was ruinous in every way. But in case these staffers remain dumb and do not learn that lesson, I do take solace in Josh's point that they are now receiving far less static from the whining masses that populate BlueSky and are now much less likely to mistakenly give them sway.
This is very true. I maintain an anon account on Bluesky and occasionally I check in to see what Taylor Lorenz, Alejandra Caraballo and Kara Swisher are posting about and it's like it's always 2020 over there. Bluesky is an amen-corner, everyone agrees, there's not much debate and they spend a lot of time congratulating themselves on how clever they are. But as Josh wrote here, they have effectively siloed themselves from popular opinion and that's a good thing for all of us and for the nation too.
I've never even heard of those three people.
Thesis proven!!
This is exactly why Truth Social is so useful for Trump. It sequesters him from normies. Getting the boot from Twitter was the best thing for him.
Thank you for posting! Please post more. Also, as someone who finds frequent publicly broadcasted idiocy discrediting, I'd love to know why anyone takes Taylor Lorenz (or Bari Weiss, for that matter) seriously.
While I appreciate Josh trying to redefine what bubble are about, he still repeats the fundamentally flawed criticism as BlueSky as a bubble.
"The problem with a 'bubble' is that it prevents the people inside from accessing the information on the outside."
Yeah, that's the theory. But:
1) it presumes that the alleged bubble is not permeable—when people post screen shots from other social media platforms and links to news stories from across the web. Heck, the bubbles we all imagine are permeable to light so....well, it's a bad metaphor.
2) there is nothing about bluesky that keeps anyone there from having and checking other social media accounts, themselves. I still have my twitter/x, threads and mastodon accounts.
Surely, some people do not check other social media accounts but I cannot imagine that people are not seeing screenshots and/or links to other platforms.
So, perhaps it is time to retire the term "bubble," at least as applied to parts of the Internet.
The biggest problem with this is that containment has been breached before; Tumblr was the original containment dome, and it didn't hold.
(But also, leftists are not "liberals, but moreso"; they're built different (worse). The important firewall isn't between liberals and everyone else, but between leftists and liberals.)
Relevant reading: https://inverseflorida.substack.com/p/sanewashing-and-how-defund-the-police
For most of us BlueSky and Twitter act as a functional firewall between normal people and politicians/journalists/celebrities/influencers. Social media itself is a bubble where everyone in the bubble talks to each other and thinks social media is where real things happen. It's true that there are crazy liberal people on Twitter and BlueSky. But it's not true that they ever had any policy influence on Democratic politics, particularly at the national level. But it's also true that people like Josh Barro are able to draw easy associations. It's not hard to make someone look stupid by photoshopping them into a picture with stupid people. I'm a liberal and all my friends are liberal. When we get together, we talk about our kids and get drunk and tell dirty jokes and drive fast cars and gossip about the neighbors and eat apple pie.
It’s not clear to me that the Bluesky containment dome will not spring some leaks during the primary season. I agree that it’s helping the Democratic Party now. Not sure that’ll continue to be the case in 2027 or 2028 when they come back to X after their self imposed exile.
We already have a NYC mayoral race that has leaked from blue sky to being second in the race. I guess losing doesn’t really matter but could a campaign like this have negative effects on other Dem campaigns if running at the same time in other cycles?
I, for one, am thrilled about the return of the Mayonnaise Clinic!
“Bluesky serves the important safety purpose of ensuring that whatever meltdowns occur within produce minimal fallout.” 👍🏼😂👍🏼