I’ve recently been posting more on Bluesky recently. The notion of blogging with limited characters per post was never one that resonated with me given my verbose “stream of conscious” style of writing. Furthermore, this (and my other blogs) have never been about posting “to an audience” since they were mainly about just doing a “core dump” of what I was thinking. Twitter as a result was therefore something that didn’t appeal to me since it originally had a 140 character limit (I mainly used it for following gaming industry accounts and a few acquaintances).
I know that I could’ve also just written this stuff offline (like into a word processor). But there have been many times I started an entry while out and then would continue when I got back home. Additionally, there is the chronological and automatic monthly and yearly aggregation (blog archive) with sites like Blogger or WordPress.
With all that is happening (including the objective of moving away from big tech companies), I’ve been looking at alternatives for this side “hobby” including posting more of my immediate thoughts on certain topics (usually as quote replies) directly on Bluesky. Maybe only on a few (like less than 10 posts) have I had to resort to multiple posting (the most being around 4 additional “+” to the original). It’s forcing me into the brevity that I long gave up on (and am still not keen on forcing myself to do).
Like here, I am not posting for or to create an audience/following on Bluesky. The difference however with microblogging is adding to the discourse (even if I am not actively/constantly engaged). That part of social media (active engaagement) is what I’m not enamored with (since it can drag too much of your time into it). If someone happens to like what I posted and/or add to it, cool. But I definitely do not want to become stuck in any part of the Discover feed algorithm (especially the politics focused ones) where it can turn into addictive doomscrolling. As it stands, I am definitely spending more time on Bluesky (because my feed is a mix of tech, Asia/Japan, photography, and current events), but I usually stop after 15-30 minutes.
Bluesky itself is definitely not a replacement though. There is no draft or edit functionality for example (and the entire editor is very simple; one thing that has saved me often is the autosaving aspect of Blogger’s editor). In this new geopolitical climate, I may just end up preferring to blog less and microblog more. I guess time will tell.
