‘Mr Blue Sky‘ is a cheerful pop tune by the Electric Light Orchestra. It is entirely unconnected with Bluesky, the social media phenomenon. It’s been around for quite a while, apparently. The social media phenomenon, I mean, although Out Of The Blue, the album by the Electric Light Orchestra that includes ‘Mr Blue Sky’ came out in 1977. But I digress. Bluesky (the social media phenomenon, please do at least try to keep up at the back), was engendered as recently as 2019 by one Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter (a different social media site), as an experimental platform that allowed the lunatics to take over the asylum users to customise their experience more flexibly than Twitter allowed. but has taken off since the Fall of Western Civilisation (was it really less than a month ago?) with the mass migration from TwiXXtit of many of its more — how can I put this? — ‘intellectual’ — habitués.
Twister was already a bit of a sinkhole. Back in the day, malcontents who wished to express their views had to find a piece of paper and write on it, venting their frustration, often in green ink, and using up every square millimetre of space, after which they’d have to find an envelope; address the envelope to someone (anyone!); buy a stamp, and mail it. In those far-off days when I wrote a science column in the Times (the real one, you know, in London) I’d regularly get mail like that. The sanest letters I received were from inmates at high-security mental hospitals. Not because those correspondents yet at large were necessarily even more dribblingly insane than those who had been incarcerated, but because those who had been locked up were, presumably, taking their medication. With Twittex, anyone at all could say whatever they liked, no matter how hateful, spiteful, ill-considered or loopy, and post it to the world at almost no cost. And they had to do it in 140 characters (ah, those were the days), a limit that doesn’t leave any room for nuance. To be fair, social media have always been prone to such afflictions, as those of us who remember Usenet groups will attest. On the plus side, Tixwart became a great place for people of shared interests to congregate and swap information. People such as scientists, who can rarely afford postage stamps, and, as it happens, mainly lean to the left, and that’s not only those who happen to be Jewish and celebrating Passover (oh, if you insist, here’s a link for the goys).
The clouds gathered when a tech squillionaire called Elon Musk, famous for electric cars and re-usable space rockets, took over Titter and renamed it ‘X’. The cheerful blue bird logo was shot out of orbit by Darth Vader’s ominously black X-wing (Star Wars enthusiasts will no doubt tell me that Darth Vader didn’t fly an X-wing, but I shall ignore them). Mr Musk took perhaps a more active role in the administration of the platform than was entirely appropriate. But it got worse. Mr Musk became rather intimate with the fifthcoming forthcoming next President of the U. S. and A., a person who was voted in by millions despite the fact that his relationship with the truth is, shall we say, elastic. The Fall of Western Civilisation election happened less than a month ago, and how things have changed. Not long after that seismic event I noticed that my tally of followers on X was falling. Looking back, I had not been accruing many new ones for a while. I didn’t think it was something I said, at least, not recently, but then twigged that people were leaving X and moving to Bluesky. I set up an account on Bluesky and now have 1,000 1,100 1,200 followers, a total that seems to be rising faster than house prices in London.
Frank has in these pages talked about alternatives to X for some while (most recently Bluesky), and not long after Mr Musk took over TwitWit I set up an account on an alternative called Mastodon, which, for some reason, hasn’t taken off in quite the same way, perhaps because it’s set up as a collection of independent sub-networks, rather than as a unified entity, but maybe because it is named after an extinct species of elephant. The transition from TwerpTit to Bluesky, on the other hand, is much simpler, perhaps because it was created by the same people. There is even an extension to Chrome which, with a bit of fiddling around, involving drawing a pentagram on the floor in chalk, sacrificing a goat to Ishtar, and earthing oneself to a radiator, allows one to find those of one’s followers on Twix who already have accounts on Bluesky.
I should say that other social media accounts are available (Frank lists some I hadn’t even heard of) and it seems I have five. Or maybe six. Being as I am a recovering palaeontologist, I can reliably count to two, but counting to three or more requires me to lie down in a darkened room afterwards. Each one of my accounts serves a different purpose. Here they are, with tally of my followers.
Bluesky: The trendy alternative to Twerpix. What XTwit used to be like. I have 1,200 followers and rising.
X: The Dark Side. I peaked at just over 3,000 followers. I still have 2,928. Clearly, not all have moved to BlueSky, so I shall be keeping an eye on it still and have no immediate plans to delete it, despite the Muskiness.
Facebook: The time-hallowed way of sounding off, though in a more relaxed way than Twitter. A space which, in my experience, is more for social than professional activities, my feed is forever clogged up with adverts and suggestions for pages to follow which, no matter how hard I try to remove them, keep coming back. I have 1,300 ‘friends’, and a separate page for promoting my books, which has 470 followers.
LinkedIn: Very much geared to professionals, this is not the place where people tend to post pictures of their cats. 1,407 followers and ‘500+ connections’.
Instagram: This very much is the place where people post pictures of their cats. Or in my case, dogs. 487 followers.
A cat, recently. Also includes a dog.
Mastodon: A social media network that seems to have been eclipsed by Bluesky and is therefore arguably redundant. 48 followers.
These are clearly too many. I have resisted signing up to Threads, and TikTok is for tinies. I’d like to be able to encourage my followers on other platforms to move to Bluesky, but not all of them will. A good friend of mine on X said he wouldn’t move to Bluesky because, he said (and this is the cleaned up version) it was full of pompous sanctimonious self-important lefty scientists who were so up their own bottoms they’d settle down in there with a standard lamp, a comfy chair and a good book. So it’s clear that I am going to have to keep most of my social media accounts. Except possibly Mastodon. I think that species is due for extinction.
I shall end with a cautionary note. Social media platforms evolve. Some stay around longer than others. Usenet groups are a thing of the past. MySpace, anyone? Tumblr? Friendfeed? The Tale of Twittr is a cautionary one, and it’s possible, even likely, that Bluesky, too, will soon be riddled with undesirable mastodons elephants elements. I have a suspicion that at least some of my more recent followers might be bots. Many seem anonymous; are sans profile picture or description; have no followers of their own; have made no posts; and (this is the suspicious part) seem to be following precisely 51 people.
The Electric Light Orchestra predicted this a long time ago. As the lyric to ‘Mr Blue Sky’ has it
Mr. Blue, you did it right
But soon comes Mr. Night creepin’ over
Now his hand is on your shoulder
Never mind, I’ll remember you this
I’ll remember you this way.
