Be the Vibe You Want to See Spreading Further

Every time I come back from an extended Twitter break it takes me at least a few days to get the hang of it again. Even the hottest topics only seem particularly important when you’re exposed to everyone’s opinions about them all day every day. I love coming back to Twitter and strongly believe it’s been a huge net positive in my life, but taking a few weeks’ break every now and then is necessary for me to maintain a healthy relationship and gain perspective on which of the stuff posted there actually matters to me at all.

I didn’t expect too much to happen there today, logging back again for the first time since February. I knew it would take me a while to understand all the references and inside jokes about stuff I haven’t been following yet. To my surprise, instead of some cryptic memes I saw everyone talking about some brand new hottest social media platform this time. A few minutes later I got an invite and fell down a rabbit hole. Most of my favorite people from Twitter were already there, without all the culture war or hustle porn stuff that usually comes packaged with them on my Twitter timeline.

Coming to Bluesky today was like accidentally stumbling upon an awesome pool party and discovering there’s plenty of my old friends there already. The last time I felt like this was at an Automattic Grand Meetup where I got to meet all 1,000 of my coworkers in person, many of them for the first time. Nearly everyone is super friendly, cheerful and enthusiastic, and this enthusiasm spills over to people who weren’t a part of our internet friend circles yet. Far from the usual dramas and the mindless spam, we get to create and experience the kind of an internet we always wished we had.

I know this honeymoon phase isn’t going to last forever. As the platform grows larger and more successful it will attract trolls and bots and all sorts of other stuff posted with various intentions. Fear and outrage make people more likely to engage with something, so sooner or later we might expect some of that in our beautiful garden too.

But for now, it’s me and my internet friends who get to set the tone and the vibe, and we’re not going to give up this privilege easily. We did it anyway even in the middle of all the culture war storms on Twitter, it’s just so much easier to do it on a brand new site when there’s no existing current to swim against. What kind of topics do you want to see more of? What questions would you like to get more answers to? What would you like to happen when someone disagrees with you? By consistently choosing what we cherish and value, we can build the foundation for a more nourishing culture.

I planned to write about something else entirely here today, but Bluesky somehow hijacked all of my attention. My brand new account there already has more followers than this whole newsletter ever had. I can’t wait to see how this weird corner of internet is going to evolve, but that’s largely on us. New platform or not, whatever vibes we embody are always creating the culture we all live in.