Donna took the garbage out this morning and discovered barf on the patio. With three dogs (and Polly’s cat) in the house we don’t always know who’s leaving these little gifts, but then we noticed Mister B hadn’t touched his breakfast and zeroed in on him as the prime suspect. Our suspicions were confirmed when he padded into the home office a while later and barfed right in front of us. We think he got into something last night but don’t know what. We’re pretty careful to keep food, snacks, and dirty dishes out of the dogs’ reach. It’s a mystery.
I’ve been creating web pages and writing blog posts since the mid-1990s. When social media came along I went full slut. Facebook, Livejournal, Tumblr, Flickr, Pinterest, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram … I bared my ass on all of them. I like to share. I like the attention. I talk too much.
When Elon Musk took over and Twitter started going downhill, I decided to move elsewhere. My migration is a work in progress. I’m on Mastodon now, if you care to follow me there. Although I no longer post to Twitter, I still check in to read what people are saying. Most of the journalists and writers who made Twitter valuable to me stayed put, waiting for something better and easier to use than Mastodon to come along.
That better thing, it appears, is a rival platform called Bluesky, started by, among others, Twitter’s former CEO Jack Dorsey. Bluesky’s in beta and you have to have an invitation code to sign up. Prominent Twitter users have been given codes and many have switched over, but riffraff like me can’t follow them there without invite codes of our own. I’ve been on Bluesky’s waitlist for more than two months, twiddling my thumbs on the couch with Mahomet, Jugdish, Sidney, and Clayton.
Which brings me to Threads, Mark Zuckerberg’s Twitterish social media platform, which opened yesterday, attracting millions of new users in a couple of hours. Including me. No snobby-ass wait list … sign up and you’re in, super easy if you already have an Instagram account. It even sets itself up so that you automatically follow (or at least see Threads posts from) the same people you already follow on Instagram. But now that a day’s gone by, I notice that my Threads feed is full of junk from people I don’t follow, overenthusiastic idiots who act like social media is entirely new to them, and so far there’s no way to restrict the feed to posts from people I want to hear from. Then again, there aren’t any ads or “promoted” posts … but to then-again twice in the same sentence, it’s early days and you know that shit’s on the way. Also, as a note of caution, signing up for Threads gives Mr. Zuckerberg the right to mine and sell your personal data, just as with Facebook and Instagram.
Those two things right there, personal privacy and the lack of ads, are to me the big selling points for Mastodon. Even though Mastodon’s clunky and geeky, I’ll be keeping my account there no matter what happens with Bluesky and Threads.
Some very prominent people have joined the rush to sign up for Threads, but I’m not betting on it to emerge as the new Twitter. Musk is trying to turn Twitter into a forum for right-wingers, incels, fundamentalists, gun nuts, Moms for Liberty, and other MAGA types. Threads, at least initially, looks like it’s going to be a pop version of Twitter, with meme- and cat-laden content à la Facebook and Instagram. Bluesky seems to be where the serious Twitter crowd, the working journalists, writers, and opinion-makers, is heading. I’ll let you know if I ever get an invite.
Speaking of social media, I posted this to a wristwatch group on Facebook earlier this week:
Notice the little yellow face emoji down in the lower left corner? It’s a response to my post, put there by one of the group’s administrators. To me, it looked like a bemused face with a thumb held up to half-smiling, half-frowning lips, as if whoever left it didn’t quite know what to make of my post. Did he think my watch wasn’t fancy enough? Did he disapprove of the fake Breitling buckle on the cheap replacement strap? Did he not believe I bought it new in 1990? Did he, like my daughter Polly, find my hairy wrist gross?
See my earlier comments about being a social media slut. The possible negative meanings of that little emoji bothered me so much I was driven to look it up. Turns out it’s this:
It’s the “care reaction” emoji, created during the COVID pandemic. It’s meant to symbolize a caring hug (without touching, of course). I imagine most people today just think of it as a hug emoji. What I thought was a bemused face is actually a little yellow dude holding a heart.
So I guess my wristwatch post is okay after all, and I don’t have to go into hiding. Whew!
Note to self: maybe it’s time for new glasses?