Well, here we are at the beginning of another week. Mine will start with an early morning bloodletting. Always a fun time. At least I won’t have dentistry interrupting my week, but I dare not express happiness for fear of God punishing me for even the smallest joy.

I’ve been dealing with the grand Twitter Bluesky migration over on social media. People think Bluesky is going to be more ethical than Twitter, but it’s the same people who made the not ethical original version of Twitter, so they’ll play goody two shoes until they get enough users, then go back to being exactly as unethical as they can get away with. Just like every other social media platform.
Elon Musk gives Twitter a human face to hate, which is something that old Twitter didn’t have to deal with since it was run by committee for the most part and the nominal founder wasn’t very talkative. I suspect that the era of Elon Musk is very much like the era of Eddison. A mouthy smartass roving around with the money and power to get away with it, in spite of people having a wide range of opinions on him. Eddison was certainly lauded by some and despised by others. The parallels seem obvious to me.
For me Twitter has been functionally dead for a couple of years anyway, and Bluesky is the same with even fewer users. All activity on either place seems like a waste of time, but I hate to miss out on any potential positive virality since there’s no way left to advertise effectively on the current version of the internet. Video platforms are a skillset I never cultivated, so my attempts to infiltrate them have been pathetic. The social media issue is only compounded by my inability to get along with other artists/creators. I’m not very good at putting on a fake face when I dislike someone. I prefer open hostility to fake friendship almost every time. It doesn’t make for an easy way in to helpful social circles though.
The current version of Bluesky is extremely fake and, at the risk of inviting political talk, wildly left wing. I detest the lack of nuance in that statement, but that’s the modern parlance. The gatekeeping is hilariously hypocritical after years of the very same people denouncing gatekeeping. It turns out if you want a peaceful playground, with no dissenting voices, you need high walls, and a strong gate. Who knew? (Spoiler: I did.)
I certainly don’t love the idea of two social media sites being politically opposed to one another, but that’s what I foresee. At the moment Bluesky is at least mostly quiet since you have to opt in to the annoying sorts of content feeds that cause so much tension usually. I expect that will change when no money is generated by peace. I’ve seen roving bands of users policing the “streets” and kicking out users they’ve decided don’t meet the group standards by way of mass reporting. That certainly doesn’t seem like a good trend… At the same time it’s hard to root for people who are unambiguously racist, or what have you. Not people who get the label applied arbitrarily, but ones who are openly opposed to race mixing, for instance. I mean, it’s difficult to defend. That said, freedom of speech applies to shitty speech too. And again, how much free speech should a platform have to tolerate? When I was young people let racists talk because they did the best job of making themselves sound stupid. Unfortunately it seems like they’ve gotten very persuasive in recent years. And started appearing in lots of diverse groups. I guess even racism can find a place for diversity…
It’s all very complex, and difficult for a simple comics man to grapple with.
The world has changed so much since I started writing this story. If I tried to tell past me some of the insane shit that has actually happened in even the last 5 years he’d call me a maniac. “May you live in interesting times…”
I’d much rather live in the times between.
In the end I guess none of this matters one way or the other. I have to keep on keeping on regardless. There’s very little I can do with the tiny nudges on history my work and life can make. It’s like trying to bump an asteroid of course so that it misses the Earth by 15 minutes. You gotta do what you think will help and cross your fingers that your calculations were correct.

I apologize for bringing the specter of reality into this safe haven. Unfortunately we all have to face reality a little bit sometimes. I will try to refrain from mentioning the outside world as much as possible for another six months or whatever. Unfortunately we live in interesting times. I made the rookie mistake of not becoming too rich and powerful to avoid the consequences of historic events. That was foolish of me. I guess I’ll just have to keep making comics and see how that goes. I don’t have a lot of options anyway. It’s either that or the glue factory.

If nothing else I hope this new page finds you well and you will return for the next one on Wednesday. As always, support links are above the post. Until next time, try to avoid becoming a footnote.

Posts authored by Jackie

2753 Doomsman.