I’ll keep this short.

X, or twitter as was, has become a cesspit of all that is vile. There are still little islands of charm and goodness that keep above the waves of effulgence but even if you land on one of those islands take a step in any direction and your standing in shit once more.

I have met lots of great people through twitter over the years. I had plenty of interesting conversations, actual discussions with people who may oppose my views but could express themselves with coherent arguments and intelligent points, while been willing to listen to another viewpoint. I’ve also had a lot of laughs, found reasons to smile on days that seemed dismal and full of dismay. And kept connected with a world and an audience, that was larger and more vivid, because of twitter.

This is no longer the case.

X is the home of the politics of lies, mis-truths and fake news about fake news. Its active users, or at least those the algorithms are driving onto my threads, are increasingly right wing, crypto-fascist, with views that are frankly abhorrent. It is no longer a nice place to hang out. It is no longer a place a rational human can exchange views with another rational human. It is an angry horrid space.

I am not leaving twitter, because I have followers there, and follow people there who I would miss. But I am taking an active decision to spend much lest time there. I’m not going to have it open in a tab on my desktop as is my habit. I’m not going to go from a stroll through the threads as often. Basically I just don’t want to spend any significant portion of my life in a place I just don’t like any more, getting angry about vile people saying vile things.

However, the sky is not all grey laden doom. In fact its blue. Bluesky in fact. A twitter alliterative that isn’t infuriating as I found mastodon, or tied to Facebook and Instagram like threads. It’s invite only that keeps the bots and clones away, and users adhere to a simple policy of none-engagement with trolls, they just block and ignore, rather than feed them.

I’ve been using blue sky for a couple of months. Its a pleasant place to hang out, and I mostly just see things from creatives or chatty people, and very little if any vile nonsense. It feels freeing and just nice. It is more of a community, much like twitter once was.

It is however still a relatively small space, and needs to grow.

If you are on blue sky you can find me there on @markhayes.bsky.social

If your not, and we know each other to some degree, even if only though the occasional like on a blog post, I do have a few invite codes, so drop me a line.