#cynicism — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

So, during the initial exodus from Twitter after it became X following Elon Musk’s purchase, many people left but kept their accounts, purposefully to bully, surveil, antagonize, and troll others. People—including me—moved to Bluesky, Mastodon, or both, and used their Twitter accounts purely for harassment and similar behavior. Essentially, X became the place you went to act like a dumpster fire. Because most people within occult niches are highly toxic, I tend to not only block them but also block anyone they follow for reasons I’m about to explain.

I really only use that account to criticize occulture, post nudes, or share YouTube videos. Since I’m aware of fed posting, I avoid commenting on political topics or anarchist discourse on the Clearnet. Keep that in mind. If you scroll through my profile, you’ll see me poking fun at chaotes, posting nudes, gushing about or complaining about my husband, sharing dating horror story YouTube videos, or pet grooming videos. If you look at my likes, you’ll only see gay porn, mathematics papers, engineering papers, etc. There’s no mention of anything political, especially genocides.

There was a person I’d never interacted with who was part of a starter pack for occultists. I blocked them. Then I woke up this morning to find I was added to this list:

Chomsky Honks
Genocide apologist posting cringe from a Starbucks as it burns down around them

So, with all that in mind, these occultists I’ve never interacted with added me to a list. I am neither invested in Bluesky nor strongly connected to their network, primarily because I block almost everyone on it and don’t ever look at any feeds whatsoever, including the Home, followers, or Discover feeds. Therefore, the posts I do interact with are from pockets of people way outside my network. It’s kind of like driving to the bathhouse in Atlanta from a small town in Bubbafuck, Georgia, because everyone in your small town is garbage. Same idea, ontologically.

Honestly, I don’t care, because I’ve mostly moved back to Mastodon and blog more.

What they’ve done is implicitly a form of defamation, because they feel slighted and justified in defaming someone they don’t know, simply because a stranger they’ve never spoken to blocked them. I tend to do a basic block on anyone who blocks me, because if you’ve decided you don’t want to see me, there’s probably no good-faith reason for us to engage in the future. It’s likely there’s some malicious intent later on. As you can see with this, I was correct.

So, in order for them to know I blocked them, they had to continuously check who had blocked them, and they believe people who block them should be punished through bullying. Since the description of the list doesn’t fit me, they retaliated out of malice. The idea behind these cliques is pretty simple: they feel threatened by anyone who rejects their normative statements because it means they are being rejected, and they view any form of dissent as an existential threat. As a result, they believe people who reject them, set boundaries, or dissent from the consensus of their culture need to be punished, and the AT protocol provides convenient tools for brigading. Ironically, these people are anti-fascist yet have a very Christian-like evangelical way of viewing the world. The lack of insight is pretty funny.

I’m the child of cult leaders and members with Cluster B personalities, so I’m not clutching my pearls, especially since I’m already set up elsewhere outside of Bluesky. They do not have the means to impose significant consequences on me, so I find it amusing. I genuinely find it funny how they eat each other. I’m not calling anyone to action—I’m just enjoying the fire.

This person wasn’t aware of who I was. We never interacted, and being added to a list that defames me happened directly after I blocked them without any prior interaction. I saw their account from the firehose and wasn’t algorithmically presented with it, meaning we’re not even in the same clique. Now, if they had said something like “spams hashtags, trolls, makes alts,” that would make sense.

When you look at it for what it is, they wanted to defame, disparage, and brigade—punitive actions because they interpreted a boundary as hostile. This is projection, as they are weaponizing a mechanism to enforce boundaries. Do I care? No. I’m just pointing out how it turned its predecessor, X, into what it is now. It became a place for people to harass others, not a space for genuine, good-faith discussions, connections, or even debates. That is not my interpretation.

Well, to anyone who knows, you might ask: Did they block you because you have a particular reputation? No. I am a Web 1.0 mage, so the networks I’m known in have roots and associations in the old forums. The occulture people who have fixated on me for years go all the way back to Wizard Forums, the psionics forums, the unsolved mystery forums, etc., from the early 2000s. If you’re a circa 2016 social media influencer mage, you probably wouldn’t know me—primarily because the moment I see you, I’ll block you. There’s also a moderation block list just for me and my alts.

This behavior is typical of the culture on Bluesky, so much so that it’s a common complaint people now have—many no longer view block lists as legitimate moderation tools. People are being advised to be skeptical of lists with a large number of people.

Oh, I’m not playing the victim here. I don’t care, because I could easily get back at them. I’m infamously vindictive and petty. More importantly, it supports my point and vindicates me. I’m not signaling victimhood; rather, I’m pointing out a culture, albeit one I participate in. Tying this back to my initial point: part of what signaled the death of Twitter as a serious forum and its transformation into X was the bullying. A while ago, I did a phylogenetic memetic analysis that basically showed how the culture on Bluesky is highly derivative of image boards. But don’t you bully and troll people? Yes, yes, I do – on Bluesky, and the lack of moderation and culture enable it. That’s my point.

Bluesky is an accelerationist and reactionary platform that gives you the tools to surveil and harass people. The developers of Bluesky and the AT Protocol have explicitly said they are technological accelerationists and libertarians. I’m not virtue signaling here; rather, I am saying Bluesky is a reactionary platform, so its culture should be understood as performative, hostile, and adversarial—not cooperative or collaborative. Just like Twitter. You can’t do what I do on Bluesky on the fediverse, because the culture won’t allow it.

You saw this type of behavior on Tumblr, where the population carrying the memetics of that culture migrated to Twitter and now Bluesky. Essentially, Bluesky became a place where malice, bullying, and hostile behavior became so normalized that I’m not even upset about lists being weaponized like this. For example, I’m not posting this on Bluesky, and I, myself, have bullied people on Bluesky. But I behave myself on Mastodon. I am using myself as an example. The trolling is happening on Bluesky. The thoughtful posts are happening on Mastodon. The blog this will be posted on is federated, so this is being posted to the fediverse.

That’s what happened to Twitter. It started normalizing hostile, toxic behavior, so that people left the platform and only returned to Twitter for schadenfreude. I have my own WordPress fediverse instance. I am just on Bluesky for the schadenfreude.

#web3 #twitter #tumblr #toxicnerds #toxic #techbros

Kirus @[email protected] · 2025-06-04 · 02:11 UTC

Ritualistically Sacrificing People’s Images Upon the Social Media Altar of Hate

It’s honestly kind of disturbing how obsessed people get with random social influencers, whether they’re famous or infamous, and how it’s almost become normal to turn any social media profile into a hate altar. The scariest part is how the line between memes and cult imagery has practically disappeared. Memes started out as just funny, ironic things, but now they’re something way bigger. They’re symbols. There’s actual research on how memes have moved beyond comedy, morphing into tools that shape beliefs and ideologies—just like how cults use imagery to brainwash and control their followers.

Influencers and politicians alike are no longer just figures we joke about—they’re symbols, figures we can either elevate or tear down. We don’t just laugh at them anymore; we turn them into these icons that can launch entire social movements, reshape ideologies, or fuel some ridiculous narrative. It’s not just about making fun of someone anymore. Sometimes, these memes border on something way darker—like worship or destruction—depending on which side of the fandom you fall on.

And it’s terrifying how this kind of obsession has been normalized. People dive into echo chambers where they only engage with content that confirms their biases, and anything remotely opposing is shot down with this obsessive, almost toxic rejection. Extreme views aren’t just tolerated—they’re amplified. It’s not just some online debate over a politician anymore; it’s about people relentlessly tearing apart someone’s reputation or blindly idolizing them to the point where they can’t do any wrong. Research on online behavior shows how this kind of content, all sensationalized and emotionally charged, is addictive—and it distorts how people see the world. Honestly, it’s like living in a digital, distorted version of reality, where everything is turned into outrage-bait just for clicks, likes, and shares. We live in a simulacrum.

What’s worse is the pathology of obsessions is now endemic to societies. It’s one thing to follow someone or engage with their content, but when it starts to consume every part of your online life—every post, every comment, every thought—something’s gone seriously wrong. They invest all this emotional energy into someone they’ve never met, creating a weird parasocial delusion. And in the digital age, it’s gotten out of hand. Some people stalk influencers, track every tiny detail of their personal lives, or even harass them online. It starts as harmless admiration, but when taken too far, it crosses a line into a full-blown obsession that hurts not just the influencer’s image but the mental health of the person obsessed too.

When you think about it, this obsession becomes like some twisted ritual where the target’s image is sacrificed. It’s not just harassment anymore—it’s dehumanization. People twist and distort a public figure’s image so much that it stops being who they are and becomes something else entirely—an idea, a symbol. It’s the same thing cults do to people: the image gets manipulated, and the followers consume it until the person themselves doesn’t exist anymore, just the idea of them. And online, it’s the same story. Figures get turned into icons that are either worshipped or torn apart, their real selves completely lost in the process. It’s like their image is being ritually sacrificed by the collective judgment of the masses—and there’s no space for nuance.

And it’s not just celebrities or politicians who are at risk. Anyone who gets thrust into the public eye through virality can become a target. All it takes is one Tik Tok. The obsessive need to either tear down or elevate a random figure based on personal biases is getting more and more cult-like. It’s become this bizarre, ritualistic form of image destruction where random people or public figures are “sacrificed” at the altar of online outrage. Their whole identity is reshaped to fit whatever narrative the internet wants to push—usually with little regard for fairness or truth. Algorithms play into this, rewarding the most extreme, polarizing content.

How the hell did we get here? How did we go from memes being these lighthearted jokes to this whole twisted, digital ritual where people’s identities get sacrificed for the sake of outrage, obsession, or devotion? Social media has created this bizarre world where the lines between fandom, obsession, and cult-like worship are totally blurred. We don’t just admire or criticize people anymore; we’re engaging with them in ways that are unhealthy, toxic, and Machiavellian. The person stops being a person. They become a symbol. And not just any symbol, but one to either tear down or idolize.

At this point, it’s not even about laughing at a meme, liking a post, or following someone on social media. It’s about ritually altering someone’s image until they’re either a god or a devil, depending on how the viewer sees them. And that’s the truly messed-up part. The online world has become a place where memes can turn into cult icons, and obsessive fixations are normal.

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