"asymmetric privilege" is the first wholly original bluesky brainworm. i hope everyone enjoys periodically thinking about this stuff in a way you can never share to friends and loved ones with better things to do than hanging out here
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
I just want to know why almost all of the people getting obsessed about this followback nonsense are the most aggressively suburban blue wave guys imaginable
When an ant is infected with the cordyceps fungus, it will climb to the top of a blade of tall grass and clamp its mandibles to secure itself in place before sprouting a structure that expels spores, infecting the rest of the colony.
Haven’t thought about this sort of online brain worm in a while and made the mistake of trying to explain it to my girlfriend (she said she was happy I found something funny)
Apologies @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com , but can you say more on this? I mean, you are here saying things you cannot share with friends and loved ones with better things to do, correct?
Are you being snarky or attempting to sound intelligent? Hopefully it's the former.
Two can play at that game. Diatonic chromaticism. Binomial decoupling. Congruent abelianism. Hyperelliptic manifold instability. Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
I think related to your follower/followed ratio? like, if you have a lot of followers but don't follow every single one of them back, that's "asymmetric privilege"
hahahahaha what. I block people who do that, since following more than a few hundred is the same as following none and just an attempt at an engagement hack or something
I generally don't actively block anyone who follows me, but I never blindly follow them. If it looks like a follow-back ploy though, I'm likely to block.
But also why would people try to shame anyone into doing that? Do they think that the popular person who is shamed into following them will then read their tweets?
Thus as we rebel against billionaires, pols who operate on self-interest and corporate overlords we probably should rebel against “big accounts“ that display this asymmetric privilege.
another thought cooked up by the terminally online that, if it escapes containment, will help hasten the destruction of society. Gatekeeping is often more about keeping the monsters in than the rabble out
It’s so bonkers that the default assumption for these people is “if i want to see your shit, you are required to want to see my shit” and now that I’ve said that it’s kind of giving patriarchy for me.
I try to keep those numbers the same but lately some fishy looking accounts started following me; ones with almost no posts.
Still, it seems we have so many newbies that I don't want to zap well-meaning folks.
My wife and I went out to the suburbs for an Xmas party on Saturday and everyone was complaining about the smug elite asymms on bsky in between talking about their kids
probably the worst thing online I've seen this year is when someone I am mutuals with on twitter didn't put me in their starter pack here, can't think of a single more evil act
“Asymmetrics” are people with large follower counts who don’t have an equally large following count. Think a poster with 30k followers who is following 500 people. Basically the dorks who are mad big accounts aren’t following them back are mad about this.
This is just Nice Guy™️ behavior, BlueSky is too Nice Guy, “ohh oh well if I’m just a Nice Guy, they’ll follow me back” reply guys don’t get followers, they get a little like notification to their replies as a treat and that’s all we deserve
yup. that, and some bizarro pyramid scheme where it's not even clear what the head of the pyramid gets from all this.
but there are people out there actually apologizing for not catching up to all their follows quickly enough, they're on it! they promise! please don't unfollow me!
(and yes, I follow a shitload of people. this has little to nothing to do with whether they follow me or not and more "oo, shiny" interesting accounts. no, clearly I don't keep up with them all. that's ok)
In college, when microblogging sites first started, my initial thought was "oh, this sucks. this is just the idiotic thoughts of losers with no friends." now, more than 25 years later as a divorced man who is addicted to posting, it is good to know that i was totally right
The asymmetric thing is wild to me because I remember when I paid attention to esports industry clout-chasing on Twitter about 4-5 years ago, it was the opposite: following fewer accounts than you have followers was the goal
I had to go to the comments for an explanation and by they time I found the answer my brain, in fact, felt rotted 😔 ("asymmetrics" are those big accounts that have way more people following them than people they're following back)
In this case ots just losers who are Big Mad they cant coast on the coattails of more popular accounts. They think people who have 20K followers should follow all of them back and take it personally when that doesn't happen. Ridiculous.
Wait wtf is symmetric privilege? Privilege that's equal? Then it's not privilege. I'm going to be thinking about this all day aren't i? Oh God I work in a social justice org I'm going to have to attend symposiums on asym privilege in a year now. Oh fuck it all to hell.
Explaining to my mom that I had to go back to twitter because big accounts wouldn’t follow me back while she cries because she’ll never have grandchildren
Hmmm. That modifier implies symmetrical privilege must also be a thing. What is that? Two opposing forces, equal in privilege and alike in dignity, at either end of a rope? My head hurts.
“It would be nice for an asymm to have a heat meter on the circumference of their pfp so you know how open they are to riffs. If their heat meter is maxed they get to delete posts”I say to my wife, who is still asleep at 11am
"Asymmetric" has become an interesting doublethinkful word, because it's always meant to imply that the weaker side is somehow unfairly advantaged. "Asymmetric warfare" makes pinprick guerrilla attacks seem like world-ending threats, with enough marketing.
They own the “+Z” on the hyperplane. We mere mortals are stuck in the X,Y and cannot freely manoeuvre in the realm of +Z on our own, but for brief hops. Unless you’re talking Air Jordan - he is def Asymmetric.
The way to post as God intended is to say a thing you think would be funny and then if you get a like it made the other person sensibly chuckle and that is the end of the interaction. I would simply not succumb to number go up.
I kind of thought we'd lose the plot on "meta" as a concept as the reality we inhabit grows more and more deranged but if anything we're reaching new frontiers of meta
A smaller follower count is better tbh. You can be more personal and interact directly w/ people.
I think they just want to sell their accounts eventually. Collecting followers like currency. Smh.
There are some very weird people who are very bad posters but who seem to think that posting is their job and socially equivalent to volunteering on a presidential campaign.
I spend the majority of my time on BlueSky blocking junk follower farming accounts expecting to trade follows. It’s like 20 a day at least. I am not obligated to follow anyone.
I didn't until a month or two ago but see a lot more now. It's very much a bullshit Twitter thing that came with the newest users and is also hugely taken advantage of by the exact type of account you've identified.
Comments
Still, asymmetric privilege is an interesting term. Kinda feels like a nerf version of something like systemic racism.
If they want to be unavoidable, they can go stand at an intersection and yell at people through a megaphone.
"I'm just glad you're having fun"
Are you being snarky or attempting to sound intelligent? Hopefully it's the former.
at this sooner if bluesky
posts could be justified
MAGA must Lie, Cheat and Steal! Abortion. Guns. Equality. End Christian nationalism!Maga is the CONFEDERACY!! https://www.npr.org/2022/06/02/1102621352/how-the-southern-baptist-convention-covered-up-its-widespread-sexual-abuse-scand
Well, not me, I'm already educated and spherical
Asymmetric justice
Asymmetric wealth
Asymmetric health care
So it's not just gonna happen like that
Cause i ain't no follow back girl
I ain't no follow back
I try to keep those numbers the same but lately some fishy looking accounts started following me; ones with almost no posts.
Still, it seems we have so many newbies that I don't want to zap well-meaning folks.
*Small fry problems, yes.
Guilty as charged.
Giant podcasting ants.
but there are people out there actually apologizing for not catching up to all their follows quickly enough, they're on it! they promise! please don't unfollow me!
weirdness.
#teamangelina
#teamangelina
https://www.inc.com/joe-procopio/i-give-bluesky-six-months-before-it-implodes/91066670
Like, enjoy saying your stupid lil thing into the tubes, be free y’all
He seems like a decent guy otherwise.
(insert sound of angry mob rushing to go vote for right wingers)
Like if you have write permissions but no read permissions so you can just ammend a log, but not catalog it
Or if you can read from a server but the server can't read your data?
I think they just want to sell their accounts eventually. Collecting followers like currency. Smh.
Thanks to your post I realize it works even when she’s not around