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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

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So I've done my best recently to avoid being subjected to personalized social media feed. So my lurking on mastodon without account saw that something happened over at Bluesky and people were leaving to go to the fediverse instead. It turns out it is classical Culture War stuff. Bluesky is apparently imploding because of "Waffles".

So this is not a "boo outgroup" post, my observation is that bluesky is resisting its best of becoming an "ideological monoculture", failing at that though. It is as uninteresting because of the monoculture for me as getting an actual account mastodon instance or truth.social and gab due to the ideological alignment of majority of their users.

It seems that it is hard to make large scale "microblogging" platform that caters to heterodox political culture and I'm a little curious if there is any insight for why it is hard to make one?

It occurs to me that I have no idea what you're even talking about.

Twitter I've seen occasionally, but Bluesky? Mastodon? truth.social? I suppose they're also social media of some sort, but I've never visited those sites. If they even are sites, rather than apps...if that distinction even matters. Could someone please spoonfeed me with a three-liner about what those actually are?

Bluesky is Twitter for people who hate Elon. I assume it’s a cesspool.

Mastodon is a bit more complicated. It was federated from the start, meaning it was always intended to let groups opt in/out of entire swathes of the broader sphere. This allows blacklisting without leaving the platform. It also supports numerous witch covens. I assume they’re all cesspools.

Truth social is Twitter for people who think Fox News is captured by anti-Trump wreckers. I don’t actually know how it differs in features, and I am okay with that. I assume it’s a cesspool.

"But where is a social network for the people who aren't sewage?"

"The what now?"