People skeeting stuff.
Bluesky Social is a microblogging social platform being developed in conjunction with the decentralized AT Protocol. Previously invite-only, the flagship Beta app went public in February 2024. All are welcome!
if lowtax's widow said she felt like lowtax had possessed me based on my behavior I'd throw every internet connected device I own in a pit
I take any mention of something awful or lowtax to mention that his hentai ban was an early domino in the rise of fascism.
Wait, who is she referring to in the screenshot? I'm not sure how Twitter works in that regard.
Background:
Jay (Graber) is the CEO of Bluesky. Lately it has been “a thing” for a certain cohort to reply to every one of her posts (along with other heads of like dev and moderation) for a while now calling for the banning or bemoaning the lack of banning of a particular user that has a reputation of an anti-trans media pundit, Jesse Singal. A big foundation of one of the early cohorts of users on Bluesky were a large section of trans users and allies.
Bluesky is getting to the size as well where it’s starting to develop some of the early Twitter environment where someone posting “I love pancakes” immediately gets a bunch of replies (on accounts with large enough reach) of “WHY DO YOU HATE WAFFLES‽” types.
Jay posted both (same day or very close) about trying to navigate a solution for this effect, and how harassing the moderators isn’t a way to get people to share your vision. She then replied to someone hijacking a reply thread to call for Singal’s ban again with “WAFFLES!” And that escalated the situation with the cohort that is bothered by Singal’s continued presence.
I'm probably stupid, but I do not understand the waffe comment. Is she trying to say "this is a waffle house, stop talking about pancakes"? Is "waffle" some sort of code word I don't understand?
I believe they're referencing how some users simply want nothing more than conflict. So if you say that you like one thing, they will choose to interpret it to mean that you hate all other possible things, and then critique your opinion about liking a thing, as though it was hate speech of all other things. They do this simply to elicit a reaction from others.
Yes, I kind of get that this is the point of the "person enters Waffle house, assumes people hate pancakes" anecdote. I just don't understand how "WAFFLES" could be seen as not only a clever comeback, but a comeback at all.
She started a thread about Bluesky content moderation policy, someone asks about Bluesky content moderation policy, and she retorts by yelling WAFFLES.
Does she mean "you are acting like that guy from the waffle house anecdote that I just posted", even though that guy was complaining about pancakes? Or is she trying to insist that "this is a place to talk about waffles, not pancakes"? Is it just a "let me remind you of my anecdote", and she reads the fable of the waffle house pancake man as a moral story about how people should shut up about banning bigots? Even though this is not the point of the anecdote at all?
Or does it simply not make sense, and I'm overthinking it? Did I snooze, and it is now not a criteria that things should make sense at all any more?
My reading of it was that, while yes she was talking about moderation policy, it was specifically with regards to a different issue within the larger window of their policy. So someone replying in regards to a different policy under the same window was a distraction from the specific topic she was trying to discuss.
So she kinda misunderstood the anecdote?
Its not "Bluesky user enters Waffle house, begins talking about pancakes. Waiter starts shouting at him, berating him for talking about anything other than waffles".
It's almost like she read the anecdote and her takeaway was "hell yes I hate pancakes".
Thanks for taking the time to explain me this stuff, I'm usually pretty quick with social cues but this just left me feeling completely dumb.
Edit: I see in your explanation you flipped waffles and pancakes around (why do you hate waffles), maybe she did the same and just decided to stick with it. Or maybe she just had a public meltdown and it doesn't need to make sense, I was just weirded out by how people kinda pretended like it did.
This was an excellent explanation of the background, thank you!
I'm now more confused than before.
So even more backstory, the guy who ran Something Awful (Richard Kyanka, aka lowtax) had a pretty big public breakdown, was effectively forced out of SA as a bunch of bad information about his private life came out, and then took his own life.
Spooky Tired was married to him, and Jay's posts are reminding her of how lowtax was behaving near the end.
Right, that makes sense.
So, losing it, in other words.
they're also banning people critical of them and not giving any reasoning, source: got banned after pushing them on their blatant transphobia approval and got no reason for it from them - https://bsky.app/profile/wetnoodle.org
I have no knowledge or experience of that, but that’s not me denying your experience, just explaining why I didn’t say anything about it.
nothing in this post has anything to do with twitter