There was/is also a subdivision in the PMC between those whose career is supported by social media and those who just enjoy it. Typically the former say things like "look, I get as much reach as twitter, isn't Blue Sky great" and the latter just wanted a nice place to be.
Why do people keep saying Threads has failed, though? There are a lot of us who like that fine-tuned, intuitive algorithm. It gets me. I think that app is simply not meant for news and current affairs, so Twitter people don't like it or see a point to it. Either way, good read.
I wasn't on Twitter but after being here for a minute, I'm starting to understand the twitterquitter mindset. I feel like Threads is meant to be a Twitter-like alternative for the IG diehards. Can't fathom the concept of Meta actually trying to replace Twitter with an app that deprioritizes links...
As my father said to me, “Son, I’m a shitposter, your da was a shitposter and his da before him. So I want to see half a dozen shitposts from you before breakfast.”
I always had sub-3,000 followers on Twitter but had loads of PMCs follow me and meet other PMCs through me, have wondered if I was like a networker for people who are going places in the world of posting, ha
You've nailed it. Threads is useless for discourse and we. need. discourse. And all the familiar characters of our online world, from main to recurring. Heroes and occasionally villains. Threads is just baffling.
Bluesky has the engagement with the old Twitter denizens, but Threads has multiples the number of active users, and is about to introduce Meta's dominating ad placements on it. If Zuck ever decides to care about it, Threads will find a way to do what old Twitter cultivated.
Threads' worst assumption is that the people we follow on Twitter are the same people we follow on Instagram. I have no interest in the inane ramblings of the celebs or, God forbid my school classmates. That Insta itself inherited people we were vaguely friends with in 2007 is the root of all issues
tldr? But any road I disagree, threads failed because it's full of wannabee influencers (£££) who post utterly stupid questions in order to gain engagement from people who tell them how stupid they are.
What I loved about early Twitter was the meritocracy of it, that ordinary people just became celebrities by being funny. Some even made a career out of it by breaking into comedy full-time. It was like being at a huge party and finding the little gang you enjoyed chatting with in a corner.
There's always going to people crowding around the big star guest at the party, trying to muscle in on the conversation and failing. We prefer to just mill about and chat to whoever looks interesting.
"We're the ones doing all those long shifts at the posting factory, making sure that all those lurkers have something to read when they're bored at work."
Your write-up empowered me to share more here. It helped me understand that there’s a place for the wordsmiths, which seemed obvious but that I never understood prior to your piece. So thank you.
My brain has been so Guardian-pilled I thought Posting Middle Class theory was going to be about BlueSky being saved from the Fascists only to be flooded with talk of house prices, school places and Ottolenghi recipes.
Finally got around to reading this - it hits the nail on the head. Like any good social space, social media runs on having folks who can spark and sustain conversation and interest, who give it a buzz. I figure corporate pressure probably cuts against this, as well.
Also I don’t want want to read the THOUGHTS of the creatives etc. I follow. Just need their pretty pictures. And the 500 character limit makes for a WALL of boring text about what people had for breakfast
As one of those lurkers I would like to thank you for your unstinting work at the coalface to provide us with hours of interesting and humorous posts to fill our days!
I think also BlueSky has benefited by making it comparatively easier to find people, coming a little closer to the idea of social media portability that addresses the sunk cost deterrent to leaving X.
To be fair Steve, if my feed is anything to go by:
Steve Peers: *Finds and announces all new arrivals*
Everyone else: "Ooh! Cheers Steve! That seems a good follow!"
There's a thank you and a compliment in there somewhere, just needs searching out 😉
What's nice about here is that there are people like Steve! There are enough cliquey bods out there intent on just racking up a massive following to preach at.
This is great. @drwilding.bsky.social described something similar as "Small Twitter", which was the chatty glue that's between the noisiest posts. You need to feel like there's hubbub. Otherwise it's like reading a succession of announcements, which is the vibe I get from Threads.
For years I explained a particular football team was successful not because it had loads of brick players (making it strong) but cause it had the right amount of mortar (glue) holding it together. Hashtag ‘glue’.
So so true. Insta is basically a marketing/portfolio platform now, and far too many threads users have moved over from there who are treating it the same. They left or never joined Twitter and probably aren’t here now either. Very few people in my industry are here yet!
And those who mainly post to sell something or progress their career are, on the whole, still on X. And it shows why they are still there. Because if they were posting a lot for their own pleasure they would not put up with what X is giving them.
Is this a defence of Stoke Newington bsky?
This helps refute the daft static analysis of networks that came from The Tipping Point with its focus on the superconnected and assumption that it was a fixed state.
It's very easy to be upwardly mobile in a small world network, hard to reach the top.
The countervailing myth is the idea of the rich influencer as aspirational, and the get rich quick gambling culture that drives that, crypto speculation, meme stocks and Musk fanboyism. The assumption that the actual writing can be left to LLMs is part of the same derangement.
Instead we sieve the flow for each other, reposting and responding to the smaller publics that we are part of, and occasionally sending something further because it strikes a chord with us in some way. The posts rise and fall on the daily waves of discussion.
The key here is that, unlike the actual proletariat, we, the 'criminals, vagabonds, and prostitutes' of social media do little that's considered productive work here, prop up the outsized influence of the a-list big accounts and basically muddy the waters of what a coherent social media ecosystem is
Do the posters control the means of production? Did the Flight From X result from contradictions becoming so heightened that a new class consciousness arose among the middling typist class? Would Lenin have had over 1m followers? In this essay....
Calm down, we're only at the bourgeoise revolution stage - we've moved out of corrupt Xersailles and settled in the National Bluesembly. The block is our guillotine.
Lol. Very good. I think I used to be an occasional poster, with nothing to sell or gain in years gone by over on the other place, but now I'm a lurker, wondering if I have the energy to step back in.
I love the framing, but isn't this just power users everywhere? You need to cater to heavy and frequent users of your thing, because they have outsize influence — while also avoiding being entirely captured by them, because their needs are nothing like the average user's.
Meta product managers saw the problem with Twitter — off-putting first-launch experience, unless you put the time in to figure out how to populate your feed — and thought "aha! we shall solve this with algorithms!", but without giving any control to users. https://findthethread.blog/Help,-I'm-Being-Personalised!/
I think you'll find that one of the major reasons Bluesky is succeeding where Zuckerberg and Musk have failed has to do with trust. I'm pretty sure you'll find that most of us trust Jack Dorsey to do what's right and we sure as hell will never trust Zuckerberg again & we never, ever did trust Musk.
I mean I more or less plucked that number out of thin air, but do think it needs to be people with at least a few thousand followers as the point is that they do drive up engagement, not always *massively* but they do it constantly
The algorithm values engagement in the forms of likes, shares, and comments. People made it clear that content that appears "genuine" and personal are better for that than bland, mass outreach.
Of course, said algorithms can boost harmful content that gets any reaction, which can lead to problems.
as a member of the lower-middle posting classes I would love to see this hypothesis expanded to encompass the posting petite bourgeoisie, posting lumpenproletariat et al, RIP Jacques Derrida you would have loved doing marxist critical theory about bsky dot app
I think there is another strand to the PMC, which is all the indie-creative posters. We are the ones who were told, early on, that social media is good for promo BUT you need to engage, rather than just post adverts. But we are the ones the platforms seem to hate the most.
We really do have a need to shout out thoughts into the ether. I missed this...quit Twitter and Facebook both awhile ago. I'm solidly PMC, and need my platform!
Are normal people really on Twitter and BlueSky though? I often think in years to come journalists, academics, celebrities and politicians will find out we were just talking to each other and bots. And maybe like 6 normal people.
The whole thing with Threads was "we aren't prioritising news and politics verticals" which is social media corporate speak for "we don't want posters we want nice normal Instagram people", which is why it's like an unholy amalgam of Facebook and Linkedin
This is a little bit too accurate: "They don’t post because they’re trying to sell a product, or solely to advance their career. ... They post because they must. There’s something fundamentally wrong with them and the worms in their brain makes them spend entire days posting away on the computer."
Back in 88-90 my sixth form college library had a comments book. I and about 20-30 others used it daily to argue about stuff. There was a talented cartoonist whose “posts” were basically proto-gifs. A guy called Jahn got very angry at being regularly replied to as Yawn.
And not just middle class. My user name comes from a nickname given to me on a third division football messageboard that shut 25 years ago. On my club’s mb which has run since about 01 there’s a politics ban because it used to get more argument about that than about the club or football.
There's a whole raft of Jon Ronson fans ("Ronsonites") who used to be on a JR discussion board in 2006 and all moved to Twitter with the same handles in 2009, who I hope are all coming to Bluesky with the same handles again! @jonronson.bsky.social
There's a simple reason - LGBT people flocked here 12-15 months ago to create a safe haven and where we go straight people eventually follow later following the trends we started 😆 😛
I always thought April Fools Day was a good example of the problem of Fb & Threads algorithm, if you make an April Fools joke after 12pm traditionally you’re the fool, yet we’d still see them still coming up days later. It’s not like there isn’t enough misinformation out there already too.
There is truly no subject on which the PMC doesn't feel entitled to post. Especially if they're white. Idle hands and a smartphone make the Devil's work...
This is a good theory. The hollowing out of the posting middle class on twitter is so stark now that whenever I look there my following tab is just news accounts, ads and a few poster equivalents of those stranded Japanese soldiers that kept on fighting after WW2 ended.
It’s a good theory. I also think Meta understands it including that the posting middle class are like the middle class elsewhere, vocal, demanding and have agency so may use it and leave.
So Meta don’t want them. This is why they’re working on AI creation tools and avatars to replace their role in the ecosystem. It’s easier for them to have this as a backdrop for a few companies and influencers they can profit from.
This could all be solved by still defaulting to For You for all new users but providing people with the *option* to have Following stick. Instead, Meta will be Meta and is making a compromise that has managed to piss off almost everyone.
It’s wild to see that there’s a solution *right there* but they can’t take it because Meta’s own culture won’t let them. Yet almost everyone I know who uses Facebook now lives in Messenger and hates the algo feed. And many who quit Threads did so again because the user experience was dreadful.
It’s also notable how many people I see writing that there are no algorithms on Bluesky. There are loads of the things. The difference is they are not forced on you. You subscribe to them by choice. You see what you want to see, whether that’s chron or algo. Meta will never give you that control.
For me, this place offers balance. Mastodon stalled because even once you got over the onboarding hump, discovery was dreadful. (It’s since improved.) Threads grates with ‘heavy’ social users and those who prize precision. Bluesky solves all of that – and now has a big enough user base to thrive.
I don't think that would be close to sufficient as there are loads to features of Threads that add up to it being extremely poster-unfriendly. For one thing, finding people to follow is hard because they barely display bios - so you almost need to know someone to follow them - hugely restrictive.
Fair. I’m just thinking of the main thing that pisses people off in terms of UX. I think, ultimately, Threads is just another Meta project, and people should realise that’s all it will ever be, *possibly* with some fediverse stuff bolted on to stave off regulatory issues.
well I had to leave there for a strange reason. My IG got flagged up for Spam this morning and because I signed up to it with a fake mobile number (as no way giving meta my number) can not get back in so well thats it really.
Hi, Craig.
Left to my own devices, I tend to treat social media algorithms like the One Ring - powerful, subvertable, ultimately not under your control. (Yes, I like Mastodon, etc.)
How would you put that differently from a journalist’s perspective? If it’s a necessary evil, how do we control it?)
Not sure. I think from my own personal perspective, I’d say awareness is a really big part of it. Understand how the algorithms work and don’t get sucked in. (eg my YouTube has never gone down a rabbit hole of hell because I know how it all works and I ‘nudge’ the feed accordingly.)
Everything about this feels true. Places like Threads seem to think that people go online to Interact with Brands. Whereas most of the people on Bluesky go online to see what the Guys Who Live In Our Phones have been up to. The major failing of Threads as an experience is "I don't know these people"
yeah I saw a post by someone saying "joined bsky, never really got twitter although it was a good place to complain to companies if they did something wrong" and yeah i'm not surprised you never got twitter
this is also why I find the big "follow for follow" thing that some people are doing to be so antithetical to the spirit of this place. I'm not going to follow a random selection of weirdos. I want to follow a very specific and curated set of weirdos!
I think you lot are making an analogue of the classic middle-class mistake of under-assessing places on the income distribution. You’re all well into the 1%. Check your privilege.
For me, I’m a replier. I’m that guy that gives encouragement to the poster. The guy who fuels your desire to post. I’m the guy who generates additional discussion. I’m the guy who makes you think about what you post and how people may react. So, post away my friends, I’m here for you.
I’m a thinker when it comes to posting. There are times when I’ll shoot from the hip in response to a post with a pinch of sarcasm. I hope it’s brings both humor and contemplation to what has been posted. Thoughtful posts are alway welcomed, stay informed.
Also, fully agree. If you want to push something, it can’t be the whole thing. By and large, people are here for genuine human connection and I can’t feel that connected to a celebrity or a brand. I can feel connected to other regular neurodivergent folks with normal complaints and funny stories.
What I learned from Twitter is that if you do have a message or something to sell, you need to have the right ratio of palatable stuff to message. My real mission here is promoting disability rights, but most people are following me for lizards. I’ve gotta post 10 lizards per disability post or else
Autism, with chronic migraine and persistent daily headache after TBI here. There's only so much that people can handle hearing about it. I suspect it's discomfort with knowing that disability is just a random permanent thing for some people, and it can happen to anyone.
It’s so horrible how many disabled people I follow that call out desperately for sympathy and understanding and the more honest they are, the weaker the response is.
I think most people just don’t have the social scripts to handle ongoing struggles.
In a single post, you’ve saved an entire middle sub-class thousands of pounds and hours in unfruitful therapy in pursuit of this diagnosis. We are forever grateful.
Comments
Always
Be
Posting
I've never tried to be a big account, I've never used tools that will spam my posts constantly to boost it. It's just me.
I spent a couple of weeks on there - enough!
She’d host hilarious Twitter parties with no bra rule.
A sentence for the ages
Yep keep,posting
I think also BlueSky has benefited by making it comparatively easier to find people, coming a little closer to the idea of social media portability that addresses the sunk cost deterrent to leaving X.
Steve Peers: *Finds and announces all new arrivals*
Everyone else: "Ooh! Cheers Steve! That seems a good follow!"
There's a thank you and a compliment in there somewhere, just needs searching out 😉
It's like he's some form of public service.
Be more Steve 😀
“I love my friends who live in my phone and whose first names I'm only 40% sure I actually know.” 😀
I draw the line at doing middle class things like watching Wimbledon though. Some things are beyond the pale.
This helps refute the daft static analysis of networks that came from The Tipping Point with its focus on the superconnected and assumption that it was a fixed state.
It's very easy to be upwardly mobile in a small world network, hard to reach the top.
Is there room for a category of gentleman and woman amateur social media person in the manner of early 20th century cricketers?
Of course, said algorithms can boost harmful content that gets any reaction, which can lead to problems.
Back in 88-90 my sixth form college library had a comments book. I and about 20-30 others used it daily to argue about stuff. There was a talented cartoonist whose “posts” were basically proto-gifs. A guy called Jahn got very angry at being regularly replied to as Yawn.
Excellent read, thank you.
1. Meta can’t help but be anything other than itself. So Threads wants to be different, but it’s ultimately another Facebook.
2. I’m not sure “we” all don’t want algo. But we do want the *option* of a chron timeline default.
This could all be solved by still defaulting to For You for all new users but providing people with the *option* to have Following stick. Instead, Meta will be Meta and is making a compromise that has managed to piss off almost everyone.
Left to my own devices, I tend to treat social media algorithms like the One Ring - powerful, subvertable, ultimately not under your control. (Yes, I like Mastodon, etc.)
How would you put that differently from a journalist’s perspective? If it’s a necessary evil, how do we control it?)
I wanna like whatever posts lurking people like
Hmmm, it's a work in progress…
It’s so horrible how many disabled people I follow that call out desperately for sympathy and understanding and the more honest they are, the weaker the response is.
I think most people just don’t have the social scripts to handle ongoing struggles.
But honestly, accepting my current disability and accepting my future disabilities in advance is one of the best things I’ve done for myself.
Threads doesn’t have the right ratio of normal stuff to message. Bluesky is mostly normal posting with no message so it’s easy to stay hooked!