Social Indifference

While alluding to on old movie in yesterday's post, it occurred to me that I used to talk a lot about old and obscure films here.  Indeed, at times, such posts dominated the content here.  But it my enthusiasm for writing up such films has waned.  In large part, I think, because of the dent my confidence in my movie reviewing abilities took after I joined Blue Sky.  In an attempt to reinvent myself social media-wise, I decided to focus on putting up my various articles there - such things seemed to be of interest to other users, judging by some of the accounts I followed.  But, I found my efforts met with utter indifference.  In fact, they elicited no reactions - positive or negative - whatsoever.  Which can get pretty confidence-sapping after a while.  I mean, I wasn't expecting to be awash with likes and re-posting, but my writings on the subject had always had a mild level of interest from readers when originally posted here, so I thought that, if nothing else, I might be able to reach a wider audience of those with similar interests.  After all, with web search apparently permanently buggered by Google and its AI obsession, I figured that I had to find some way of reaching a wider potential audience.  Blue Sky, though, apparently isn't it.  In fact, its indifference has killed my enthusiasm for writing about movies altogether.  (Interestingly, though, all of my previous movie posts seem to be of huge interest to the various AI bots swarming over the web at present).

I have to say that, overall, I've found using Blue Sky a desultory, soul-destroying even, experience.  There is a certain 'clique-ishness' to most social media platforms, often making it difficult for new users to gain traction, but Blue Sky is probably the worst I've ever encountered.  It feels as if there is a strict hierachy, with early adopters at the top, that rules the roost there - your job as a newcomer is simply to follow more established accounts and boost them with likes and re-postings.  Moreover, everyone there seems so concerned with being 'right-on' and displaying the 'right' attitudes, (it is the anti-Twitter, after all), that they frequently seem reluctant to like or re-post anything for fear it might be the 'wrong' thing to like.  Maybe I'm being oversensitive because Blue Sky doesn't want to recognise my obvious genius, but I'm not the only user that has noticed the cool indifference of Blue Sky - Hell, I get more responses to stuff I put on Threads and I barely have a presence there.  I suppose that it doesn't help that I keep disparaging the pretensions of those Blue Sky members who put stuff like 'working on my book' in their bios and like to casually repeat it in posts.  Look, if you've actually written a book, great, by all means brag about it.  But anyone can say they are 'working' on a book.  Plus, my embracing of AI for creative purposes doesn't help my cause, either.  I'm surprised that when I've posted links to the 'After Hours' podcast there, (I've actually given up doing so, as its utterly pointless), I haven't ended up facing the Blue Sky equivalent of a lynch mob, waving burning torches and accusing me of witchcraft.  This Luddite tendency is another deeply unappealing aspect of the platform.  Not that I intend shutting down my account there or returning to Twitter any time soon, I'll just stick around and be as indifferent as all the other buggers on there.