Unraveling quickly
I signed up for Threads on its first day. Partly to check it out, and partly because since Elon took over Twitter, every new follower I get is a scantily clad sex worker with a linked porn site. Hey ladies, take it elsewhere — I’m already doing far better than you.
Day 1 on Threads was filled with messages of welcoming! Welcome to a new place, far better than the old place. Phew! We’re glad to be out of that place, with the jackboots in the street! We’re cheering on its demise!
Day 2 found me unfollowing all sorts of people I never followed. Except there’s no way to unfollow them. So I started muting them. They may still be talking to me, but at least now I can’t hear them. The very first ones I muted had the last names Kardashian and Jenner. I am not kidding. At least in the previous place I’d never had to see these names or come across whatever they were pressing on us in service of peddling their empty fame.
Day 3 saw the beginning emergence of the radical grifters we’d been running away from, and also entreaties by people to try to keep this the sort of place we were hoping for on Day 1. Political strategist Mike Madrid of the Lincoln Project shared a thread reminding people not to interact with these mercenary mouthpieces because your engagement is precisely how they build their audience on new platforms. Someone else asked, Can we be nice here, at least?
And I posted, “It took Threads all of 10 seconds to get overrun by celebrities and also discussions of a certain ex-president. What a refreshing change from that other platform!”
July 9th, 2023 at 1:01 am
Agreed. Currently Twitter is still more useful despite Musty’s tantrums. This morning I’m mostly seeing new agey aphorisms. Yesterday I was seeing horrible reposts from Tik Took where people punch people for laughs and clicks. Because I had a fairly busy (stagnated recently ) Instagram account anyone who signs up to Threads who follows me there and vice versa is automatically connected. It is possible to follow /unfollow pretty easily from your home page though by clicking on the tab. I prefer the Twitter approach of following accounts you are interested in and not expect them to reciprocate. The lack of a word search function must be deliberate at the moment. Relinking to Accounts you follow on Twitter will be quite an upward schlep let alone finding the really interesting accounts that left Twitter in their droves. … anyway, I should read, do more in the real world!