Re: The Bluesky Panopticon
Aug. 28th, 2025 07:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingSorry I’m not done yet. There’s no need to go into the details, but here’s another thing that happened on Bluesky earlier this year:
(a) A guy in my field who seemed nice followed me, so I followed him back.
(b) Within a week or two, I realized he was a douchebag, so I blocked him.
(c) Months later, unknown to me, there was some sort of drama with this guy.
(d) Suddenly I got a dozen DMs from people asking why I’m following him.
Apparently Bluesky still lists you as following someone if you block them, and I had to send everyone screenshots to “prove” that I did indeed have this guy blocked. And just to be clear, he’s not a predator or anything; he’s just an obnoxious online reply guy. Still, because I didn’t know enough about Bluesky to realize that you have to manually unfollow someone you block, actual adult professionals whom I’ve met in real life were getting really upset with me. I lost a publication opportunity because of this then, and I’m 85% certain I lost another publication opportunity because of this more recently.
I’m gonna be real, this is why I don’t like to write about gender or sexuality anymore. The purity politics in online feminist communities can be really scary sometimes.
As a palate cleanser, please allow me to share this photo of a baby sloth:
(a) A guy in my field who seemed nice followed me, so I followed him back.
(b) Within a week or two, I realized he was a douchebag, so I blocked him.
(c) Months later, unknown to me, there was some sort of drama with this guy.
(d) Suddenly I got a dozen DMs from people asking why I’m following him.
Apparently Bluesky still lists you as following someone if you block them, and I had to send everyone screenshots to “prove” that I did indeed have this guy blocked. And just to be clear, he’s not a predator or anything; he’s just an obnoxious online reply guy. Still, because I didn’t know enough about Bluesky to realize that you have to manually unfollow someone you block, actual adult professionals whom I’ve met in real life were getting really upset with me. I lost a publication opportunity because of this then, and I’m 85% certain I lost another publication opportunity because of this more recently.
I’m gonna be real, this is why I don’t like to write about gender or sexuality anymore. The purity politics in online feminist communities can be really scary sometimes.
As a palate cleanser, please allow me to share this photo of a baby sloth:
no subject
Date: 2025-08-29 07:44 pm (UTC)Also speaking of Tenna hskshsjd I read your article about Deltarune chapter 3 a couple weeks back and never got around to letting you know I loved reading it and you did a wonderful job putting it together. And so glad you included the most important point: understanding why everyone wants to smooch him 💕