#toxicnerds — Public Fediverse posts

Your BlueSky Feed Is Porn You Didn’t Ask For Because Your Friends Are Gooners With a Severe Porn Addiction

A common complaint I see people make on Bluesky is: why am I being served so much porn or things I am not interested in? They will incorrectly believe that the algorithm is broken. It’s not broken. You didn’t know the people you knew as well as you thought you did. Porn addiction is a thing, and porn addiction is especially common with weebs. You’re seeing deranged shit because people you follow have porn addictions and are into deranged shit. So, though you may not be consuming porn, people in your network are. That activity kicks into your feeds.

The issue I have with that is that it essentially normalizes being sex pests in a space on the Internet. That sets the expectation that it is good—attractive, even—to act like that elsewhere. That expectation alienates relationships. Bluesky creates a cultural space that offers an unrealistic, bizarre representation of social relationships, which isolates and alienates the users who stay on there consuming erotica and porn like they do.

So, user repos in Bluesky have a property for likes. Bluesky’s underlying AT Protocol stores likes as first-class structured records in each user’s AT Protocol repository. In the AT Protocol lexicon, a like is an app.bsky.feed.like record type. Unlike a simple boolean flag on a post, it is its own record with a creation timestamp and a subject field that holds a strong reference to the liked record.

That strong reference is composed of an AT-URI and a CID. The AT-URI identifies the exact record in the network by DID, collection, and record key. The CID is a cryptographic content identifier that uniquely identifies the exact content of that liked record.

These like records exist under the app.bsky.feed.like namespace in the user’s repo. Bluesky’s repo model is built so that these repos are hosted on a user’s Personal Data Server and are publicly readable through the AT Protocol APIs. Because of that, the like record and its fields can be fetched, indexed, and used by any client or service that can query the protocol.

The protocol exposes operations like getLikes. This returns all of the like records tied to a particular subject’s AT-URI and CID. It also exposes getActorLikes. This returns all of the subject references a given actor has liked. Those API calls return structured like objects with timestamps and subject references directly from the public repository data.

Various feeds hosted by different PDSs use the likes property to construct the feeds that you see. Since the likes of people you follow are included in your social graph, along with your own likes, you’re going to get served the porn they are consuming. Because likes are public and anyone can write an algorithm to see everyone’s likes, you can clearly see just how much porn people are consuming.

Honestly, what started to turn my stomach about the people on Bluesky is how they behave across different contexts. If you look through the records of the posts they interact with, you’ll see them engaging with political posts in the replies like a normal person. Then, when you look through their AT Protocol records, you see hours and hours of them interacting with every kind of porn imaginable. I am not exaggerating. Hours of likes for porn posts within 1–10 minutes of each other. Am I sex-negative? A prude? No, this site is filled with furry, gay bara porn, lol. You can have a drink without being an alcoholic. The problem with these people is like people who can’t have one drink without drinking the whole fucking day; they can’t consume porn in healthy ways.

I think people assume that their feed is customized for them and based on their likes. No—feeds are generalized based on what everyone likes and then served to your subgraph. It’s not just about who you follow; it’s about who they follow. So if you follow someone who follows a lot of people with porn addictions, you will see porn. Bluesky isn’t weighting the algorithm to do this. Basically, it’s the people in your social network with furry, hentai, or trans porn addictions who are driving it.

Your BlueSky Feed Is Porn You Didn’t Ask For Because Your Friends Are Gooners With a Severe Porn Addiction

A common complaint I see people make on Bluesky is: why am I being served so much porn or things I am not interested in? They will incorrectly believe that the algorithm is broken. It’s not broken. You didn’t know the people you knew as well as you thought you did. Porn addiction is a thing, and porn addiction is especially common with weebs. You’re seeing deranged shit because people you follow have porn addictions and are into deranged shit. So, though you may not be consuming porn, people in your network are. That activity kicks into your feeds.

The issue I have with that is that it essentially normalizes being sex pests in a space on the Internet. That sets the expectation that it is good—attractive, even—to act like that elsewhere. That expectation alienates relationships. Bluesky creates a cultural space that offers an unrealistic, bizarre representation of social relationships, which isolates and alienates the users who stay on there consuming erotica and porn like they do.

So, user repos in Bluesky have a property for likes. Bluesky’s underlying AT Protocol stores likes as first-class structured records in each user’s AT Protocol repository. In the AT Protocol lexicon, a like is an app.bsky.feed.like record type. Unlike a simple boolean flag on a post, it is its own record with a creation timestamp and a subject field that holds a strong reference to the liked record.

That strong reference is composed of an AT-URI and a CID. The AT-URI identifies the exact record in the network by DID, collection, and record key. The CID is a cryptographic content identifier that uniquely identifies the exact content of that liked record.

These like records exist under the app.bsky.feed.like namespace in the user’s repo. Bluesky’s repo model is built so that these repos are hosted on a user’s Personal Data Server and are publicly readable through the AT Protocol APIs. Because of that, the like record and its fields can be fetched, indexed, and used by any client or service that can query the protocol.

The protocol exposes operations like getLikes. This returns all of the like records tied to a particular subject’s AT-URI and CID. It also exposes getActorLikes. This returns all of the subject references a given actor has liked. Those API calls return structured like objects with timestamps and subject references directly from the public repository data.

Various feeds hosted by different PDSs use the likes property to construct the feeds that you see. Since the likes of people you follow are included in your social graph, along with your own likes, you’re going to get served the porn they are consuming. Because likes are public and anyone can write an algorithm to see everyone’s likes, you can clearly see just how much porn people are consuming.

Honestly, what started to turn my stomach about the people on Bluesky is how they behave across different contexts. If you look through the records of the posts they interact with, you’ll see them engaging with political posts in the replies like a normal person. Then, when you look through their AT Protocol records, you see hours and hours of them interacting with every kind of porn imaginable. I am not exaggerating. Hours of likes for porn posts within 1–10 minutes of each other. Am I sex-negative? A prude? No, this site is filled with furry, gay bara porn, lol. You can have a drink without being an alcoholic. The problem with these people is like people who can’t have one drink without drinking the whole fucking day; they can’t consume porn in healthy ways.

I think people assume that their feed is customized for them and based on their likes. No—feeds are generalized based on what everyone likes and then served to your subgraph. It’s not just about who you follow; it’s about who they follow. So if you follow someone who follows a lot of people with porn addictions, you will see porn. Bluesky isn’t weighting the algorithm to do this. Basically, it’s the people in your social network with furry, hentai, or trans porn addictions who are driving it.

Your BlueSky Feed Is Porn You Didn’t Ask For Because Your Friends Are Gooners With a Severe Porn Addiction

A common complaint I see people make on Bluesky is: why am I being served so much porn or things I am not interested in? They will incorrectly believe that the algorithm is broken. It’s not broken. You didn’t know the people you knew as well as you thought you did. Porn addiction is a thing, and porn addiction is especially common with weebs. You’re seeing deranged shit because people you follow have porn addictions and are into deranged shit. So, though you may not be consuming porn, people in your network are. That activity kicks into your feeds.

The issue I have with that is that it essentially normalizes being sex pests in a space on the Internet. That sets the expectation that it is good—attractive, even—to act like that elsewhere. That expectation alienates relationships. Bluesky creates a cultural space that offers an unrealistic, bizarre representation of social relationships, which isolates and alienates the users who stay on there consuming erotica and porn like they do.

So, user repos in Bluesky have a property for likes. Bluesky’s underlying AT Protocol stores likes as first-class structured records in each user’s AT Protocol repository. In the AT Protocol lexicon, a like is an app.bsky.feed.like record type. Unlike a simple boolean flag on a post, it is its own record with a creation timestamp and a subject field that holds a strong reference to the liked record.

That strong reference is composed of an AT-URI and a CID. The AT-URI identifies the exact record in the network by DID, collection, and record key. The CID is a cryptographic content identifier that uniquely identifies the exact content of that liked record.

These like records exist under the app.bsky.feed.like namespace in the user’s repo. Bluesky’s repo model is built so that these repos are hosted on a user’s Personal Data Server and are publicly readable through the AT Protocol APIs. Because of that, the like record and its fields can be fetched, indexed, and used by any client or service that can query the protocol.

The protocol exposes operations like getLikes. This returns all of the like records tied to a particular subject’s AT-URI and CID. It also exposes getActorLikes. This returns all of the subject references a given actor has liked. Those API calls return structured like objects with timestamps and subject references directly from the public repository data.

Various feeds hosted by different PDSs use the likes property to construct the feeds that you see. Since the likes of people you follow are included in your social graph, along with your own likes, you’re going to get served the porn they are consuming. Because likes are public and anyone can write an algorithm to see everyone’s likes, you can clearly see just how much porn people are consuming.

Honestly, what started to turn my stomach about the people on Bluesky is how they behave across different contexts. If you look through the records of the posts they interact with, you’ll see them engaging with political posts in the replies like a normal person. Then, when you look through their AT Protocol records, you see hours and hours of them interacting with every kind of porn imaginable. I am not exaggerating. Hours of likes for porn posts within 1–10 minutes of each other. Am I sex-negative? A prude? No, this site is filled with furry, gay bara porn, lol. You can have a drink without being an alcoholic. The problem with these people is like people who can’t have one drink without drinking the whole fucking day; they can’t consume porn in healthy ways.

I think people assume that their feed is customized for them and based on their likes. No—feeds are generalized based on what everyone likes and then served to your subgraph. It’s not just about who you follow; it’s about who they follow. So if you follow someone who follows a lot of people with porn addictions, you will see porn. Bluesky isn’t weighting the algorithm to do this. Basically, it’s the people in your social network with furry, hentai, or trans porn addictions who are driving it.

Your BlueSky Feed Is Porn You Didn’t Ask For Because Your Friends Are Gooners With a Severe Porn Addiction

A common complaint I see people make on Bluesky is: why am I being served so much porn or things I am not interested in? They will incorrectly believe that the algorithm is broken. It’s not broken. You didn’t know the people you knew as well as you thought you did. Porn addiction is a thing, and porn addiction is especially common with weebs. You’re seeing deranged shit because people you follow have porn addictions and are into deranged shit. So, though you may not be consuming porn, people in your network are. That activity kicks into your feeds.

The issue I have with that is that it essentially normalizes being sex pests in a space on the Internet. That sets the expectation that it is good—attractive, even—to act like that elsewhere. That expectation alienates relationships. Bluesky creates a cultural space that offers an unrealistic, bizarre representation of social relationships, which isolates and alienates the users who stay on there consuming erotica and porn like they do.

So, user repos in Bluesky have a property for likes. Bluesky’s underlying AT Protocol stores likes as first-class structured records in each user’s AT Protocol repository. In the AT Protocol lexicon, a like is an app.bsky.feed.like record type. Unlike a simple boolean flag on a post, it is its own record with a creation timestamp and a subject field that holds a strong reference to the liked record.

That strong reference is composed of an AT-URI and a CID. The AT-URI identifies the exact record in the network by DID, collection, and record key. The CID is a cryptographic content identifier that uniquely identifies the exact content of that liked record.

These like records exist under the app.bsky.feed.like namespace in the user’s repo. Bluesky’s repo model is built so that these repos are hosted on a user’s Personal Data Server and are publicly readable through the AT Protocol APIs. Because of that, the like record and its fields can be fetched, indexed, and used by any client or service that can query the protocol.

The protocol exposes operations like getLikes. This returns all of the like records tied to a particular subject’s AT-URI and CID. It also exposes getActorLikes. This returns all of the subject references a given actor has liked. Those API calls return structured like objects with timestamps and subject references directly from the public repository data.

Various feeds hosted by different PDSs use the likes property to construct the feeds that you see. Since the likes of people you follow are included in your social graph, along with your own likes, you’re going to get served the porn they are consuming. Because likes are public and anyone can write an algorithm to see everyone’s likes, you can clearly see just how much porn people are consuming.

Honestly, what started to turn my stomach about the people on Bluesky is how they behave across different contexts. If you look through the records of the posts they interact with, you’ll see them engaging with political posts in the replies like a normal person. Then, when you look through their AT Protocol records, you see hours and hours of them interacting with every kind of porn imaginable. I am not exaggerating. Hours of likes for porn posts within 1–10 minutes of each other. Am I sex-negative? A prude? No, this site is filled with furry, gay bara porn, lol. You can have a drink without being an alcoholic. The problem with these people is like people who can’t have one drink without drinking the whole fucking day; they can’t consume porn in healthy ways.

I think people assume that their feed is customized for them and based on their likes. No—feeds are generalized based on what everyone likes and then served to your subgraph. It’s not just about who you follow; it’s about who they follow. So if you follow someone who follows a lot of people with porn addictions, you will see porn. Bluesky isn’t weighting the algorithm to do this. Basically, it’s the people in your social network with furry, hentai, or trans porn addictions who are driving it.

BlueSky’s Solution To Moderating Is Moderating Without Moderating via Social Proximity

I have noticed a lot of people are confused about why some posts don’t show up on threads, though they are not labeled by the moderation layer. Bluesky has begun using what it calls social neighborhoods (or network proximity) as a ranking signal for replies in threads. Replies from people who are closer to you in the social graph, accounts you follow, interact with, or share mutual connections with, are prioritized and shown more prominently. Replies from accounts that are farther away in that network are down-ranked. They are pushed far down the thread or placed behind “hidden replies.”

Each person gets their own unique view of a thread based on their social graph. It creates the impression that replies from distant users simply don’t exist. This is true even though they’re still technically public and viewable if you expand the thread or adjust filters. Bluesky is explicitly using features of subgraphs to moderate without moderating. Their reasoning is that if you can’t see each other, you can’t harass each other. Ergo, there is nothing to moderate.

Bluesky mentions that here:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-31-2025-building-healthier-social-media-update

As a digression, I’m not going to lie: I really enjoyed working on software built on the AT protocol, but their fucking users are so goddamn weird. It’s sort of like enjoying building houses, but hating every single person who moves into them. But, you don’t have to deal with them because you’re just the contractor. That is how I feel about Bluesky. I hate the people. I really like the protocol and infrastructure.

I sort of am a sadist who does enjoy drama, so I do get schadenfreude from people with social media addictions and parasocial fixations who reply to random people on Bluesky, because they don’t realize their replies are disconnected from the author’s thread unless that person is within their network. They aren’t part of the conversation they think they are. They’re algorithmically isolated from everyone else. Their replies aren’t viewable from the author’s thread because of how Bluesky handles social neighborhoods.

Bluesky’s idea of social neighborhoods is about grouping users into overlapping clusters based on real interaction patterns rather than just the follow graph. Unlike Twitter, it does not treat the network as one big public square. Instead, it models networks of “social neighborhoods” made up of people you follow, people who follow you, people you frequently interact with, and people who are closely connected to those groups. They’re soft, probabilistic groupings rather than strict labels.

Everyone does not see the same replies. Bluesky is being a bit vague with “hidden.” Hidden means your reply is still anchored to the thread and can be expanded. There is another way Bluesky can handle this. Bluesky uses social neighborhoods to judge contextual relevance. Replies from people inside or near your social neighborhood are more likely to be shown inline with a thread, expanded by default, or served in feeds. Replies from outside your neighborhood are still public and still indexed, but they’re treated as lower-context contributions.

Basically, if you reply to a thread, you will see it anchored to the conversation, and everyone will see it in search results, as a hashtag, or from your profile, but it will not be accessible via the thread of the person you were replying to. It is like shadow-banning people from threads unless they are strongly networked.

Because people have not been working with the AT Protocol like I have, they assume they are shadow-banned across the entire Bluesky app view. No—everyone is automatically shadow-banned from everyone else unless they are within the same social neighborhood. In other words, you are not part of the conversation you think you are joining because you are not part of their social group.

Your replies will appear in profiles, hashtag feeds, or search results without being visually anchored to the full thread. Discovery impressions are neighborhood-agnostic: they serve content because it matches a query, tag, or activity stream. Once the reply is shown, the app then decides whether it’s worth pulling in the rest of the conversation for you. If the original author and most participants fall outside your neighborhood, Bluesky often chooses not to expand that context automatically.

Bluesky really is trying to avoid having to moderate, so this is their solution. Instead of banning or issuing takedown labels to DIDs, the system lets replies exist everywhere, but not in that particular instance of the thread.

I find this ironic because a large reason why many people are staying on Bluesky and not moving to the fediverse—thank God, because I do not want them there—is discoverability, virality, and engagement.

In case anyone is asking how I know so much about how these algorithms work: I was a consultant on a lot of these types of algorithms, so I certainly hope I’d know how they work, lol. No, you get no more details about the work I’ve done. I have no hand in the algorithm Bluesky is using, but I have proposed and implemented that type of algorithm before.

I have an interest in noetics and the noosphere. A large amount of my ontological work is an extension of my attempts to model domains that have no spatial or temporal coordinates. The question is how do you generalize a metric space that has no physically, spatial properties. I went to school to try to formalize those ideas. Turns out they’re rather useful for digital social networks, too. The ontological analog to spatial distance, when you have no space, is a graph of similarities.

This can be modeled by representing each item as a node in a weighted graph, where edges are weighted by dissimilarity rather than similarity. Highly similar items are connected by low-weight edges, while less similar items are connected by higher-weight edges. Distances in the graph, computed using standard shortest-path algorithms, then correspond to degrees of similarity. Closely related items are separated by short path lengths, while increasingly dissimilar items require longer paths through the graph. It turns out that attempts to generalize metric spaces for noetic domains—to model noetic/psychic spaces—are actually pretty useful for social media algorithms, lol.

BlueSky’s Solution To Moderating Is Moderating Without Moderating via Social Proximity

I have noticed a lot of people are confused about why some posts don’t show up on threads, though they are not labeled by the moderation layer. Bluesky has begun using what it calls social neighborhoods (or network proximity) as a ranking signal for replies in threads. Replies from people who are closer to you in the social graph, accounts you follow, interact with, or share mutual connections with, are prioritized and shown more prominently. Replies from accounts that are farther away in that network are down-ranked. They are pushed far down the thread or placed behind “hidden replies.”

Each person gets their own unique view of a thread based on their social graph. It creates the impression that replies from distant users simply don’t exist. This is true even though they’re still technically public and viewable if you expand the thread or adjust filters. Bluesky is explicitly using features of subgraphs to moderate without moderating. Their reasoning is that if you can’t see each other, you can’t harass each other. Ergo, there is nothing to moderate.

Bluesky mentions that here:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-31-2025-building-healthier-social-media-update

As a digression, I’m not going to lie: I really enjoyed working on software built on the AT protocol, but their fucking users are so goddamn weird. It’s sort of like enjoying building houses, but hating every single person who moves into them. But, you don’t have to deal with them because you’re just the contractor. That is how I feel about Bluesky. I hate the people. I really like the protocol and infrastructure.

I sort of am a sadist who does enjoy drama, so I do get schadenfreude from people with social media addictions and parasocial fixations who reply to random people on Bluesky, because they don’t realize their replies are disconnected from the author’s thread unless that person is within their network. They aren’t part of the conversation they think they are. They’re algorithmically isolated from everyone else. Their replies aren’t viewable from the author’s thread because of how Bluesky handles social neighborhoods.

Bluesky’s idea of social neighborhoods is about grouping users into overlapping clusters based on real interaction patterns rather than just the follow graph. Unlike Twitter, it does not treat the network as one big public square. Instead, it models networks of “social neighborhoods” made up of people you follow, people who follow you, people you frequently interact with, and people who are closely connected to those groups. They’re soft, probabilistic groupings rather than strict labels.

Everyone does not see the same replies. Bluesky is being a bit vague with “hidden.” Hidden means your reply is still anchored to the thread and can be expanded. There is another way Bluesky can handle this. Bluesky uses social neighborhoods to judge contextual relevance. Replies from people inside or near your social neighborhood are more likely to be shown inline with a thread, expanded by default, or served in feeds. Replies from outside your neighborhood are still public and still indexed, but they’re treated as lower-context contributions.

Basically, if you reply to a thread, you will see it anchored to the conversation, and everyone will see it in search results, as a hashtag, or from your profile, but it will not be accessible via the thread of the person you were replying to. It is like shadow-banning people from threads unless they are strongly networked.

Because people have not been working with the AT Protocol like I have, they assume they are shadow-banned across the entire Bluesky app view. No—everyone is automatically shadow-banned from everyone else unless they are within the same social neighborhood. In other words, you are not part of the conversation you think you are joining because you are not part of their social group.

Your replies will appear in profiles, hashtag feeds, or search results without being visually anchored to the full thread. Discovery impressions are neighborhood-agnostic: they serve content because it matches a query, tag, or activity stream. Once the reply is shown, the app then decides whether it’s worth pulling in the rest of the conversation for you. If the original author and most participants fall outside your neighborhood, Bluesky often chooses not to expand that context automatically.

Bluesky really is trying to avoid having to moderate, so this is their solution. Instead of banning or issuing takedown labels to DIDs, the system lets replies exist everywhere, but not in that particular instance of the thread.

I find this ironic because a large reason why many people are staying on Bluesky and not moving to the fediverse—thank God, because I do not want them there—is discoverability, virality, and engagement.

In case anyone is asking how I know so much about how these algorithms work: I was a consultant on a lot of these types of algorithms, so I certainly hope I’d know how they work, lol. No, you get no more details about the work I’ve done. I have no hand in the algorithm Bluesky is using, but I have proposed and implemented that type of algorithm before.

I have an interest in noetics and the noosphere. A large amount of my ontological work is an extension of my attempts to model domains that have no spatial or temporal coordinates. The question is how do you generalize a metric space that has no physically, spatial properties. I went to school to try to formalize those ideas. Turns out they’re rather useful for digital social networks, too. The ontological analog to spatial distance, when you have no space, is a graph of similarities.

BlueSky’s Solution To Moderating Is Moderating Without Moderating via Social Proximity

I have noticed a lot of people are confused about why some posts don’t show up on threads, though they are not labeled by the moderation layer. Bluesky has begun using what it calls social neighborhoods (or network proximity) as a ranking signal for replies in threads. Replies from people who are closer to you in the social graph, accounts you follow, interact with, or share mutual connections with, are prioritized and shown more prominently. Replies from accounts that are farther away in that network are down-ranked. They are pushed far down the thread or placed behind “hidden replies.”

Each person gets their own unique view of a thread based on their social graph. It creates the impression that replies from distant users simply don’t exist. This is true even though they’re still technically public and viewable if you expand the thread or adjust filters. Bluesky is explicitly using features of subgraphs to moderate without moderating. Their reasoning is that if you can’t see each other, you can’t harass each other. Ergo, there is nothing to moderate.

Bluesky mentions that here:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-31-2025-building-healthier-social-media-update

As a digression, I’m not going to lie: I really enjoyed working on software built on the AT protocol, but their fucking users are so goddamn weird. It’s sort of like enjoying building houses, but hating every single person who moves into them. But, you don’t have to deal with them because you’re just the contractor. That is how I feel about Bluesky. I hate the people. I really like the protocol and infrastructure.

I sort of am a sadist who does enjoy drama, so I do get schadenfreude from people with social media addictions and parasocial fixations who reply to random people on Bluesky, because they don’t realize their replies are disconnected from the author’s thread unless that person is within their network. They aren’t part of the conversation they think they are. They’re algorithmically isolated from everyone else. Their replies aren’t viewable from the author’s thread because of how Bluesky handles social neighborhoods.

Bluesky’s idea of social neighborhoods is about grouping users into overlapping clusters based on real interaction patterns rather than just the follow graph. Unlike Twitter, it does not treat the network as one big public square. Instead, it models networks of “social neighborhoods” made up of people you follow, people who follow you, people you frequently interact with, and people who are closely connected to those groups. They’re soft, probabilistic groupings rather than strict labels.

Everyone does not see the same replies. Bluesky is being a bit vague with “hidden.” Hidden means your reply is still anchored to the thread and can be expanded. There is another way Bluesky can handle this. Bluesky uses social neighborhoods to judge contextual relevance. Replies from people inside or near your social neighborhood are more likely to be shown inline with a thread, expanded by default, or served in feeds. Replies from outside your neighborhood are still public and still indexed, but they’re treated as lower-context contributions.

Basically, if you reply to a thread, you will see it anchored to the conversation, and everyone will see it in search results, as a hashtag, or from your profile, but it will not be accessible via the thread of the person you were replying to. It is like shadow-banning people from threads unless they are strongly networked.

Because people have not been working with the AT Protocol like I have, they assume they are shadow-banned across the entire Bluesky app view. No—everyone is automatically shadow-banned from everyone else unless they are within the same social neighborhood. In other words, you are not part of the conversation you think you are joining because you are not part of their social group.

Your replies will appear in profiles, hashtag feeds, or search results without being visually anchored to the full thread. Discovery impressions are neighborhood-agnostic: they serve content because it matches a query, tag, or activity stream. Once the reply is shown, the app then decides whether it’s worth pulling in the rest of the conversation for you. If the original author and most participants fall outside your neighborhood, Bluesky often chooses not to expand that context automatically.

Bluesky really is trying to avoid having to moderate, so this is their solution. Instead of banning or issuing takedown labels to DIDs, the system lets replies exist everywhere, but not in that particular instance of the thread.

I find this ironic because a large reason why many people are staying on Bluesky and not moving to the fediverse—thank God, because I do not want them there—is discoverability, virality, and engagement.

In case anyone is asking how I know so much about how these algorithms work: I was a consultant on a lot of these types of algorithms, so I certainly hope I’d know how they work, lol. No, you get no more details about the work I’ve done. I have no hand in the algorithm Bluesky is using, but I have proposed and implemented that type of algorithm before.

I have an interest in noetics and the noosphere. A large amount of my ontological work is an extension of my attempts to model domains that have no spatial or temporal coordinates. The question is how do you generalize a metric space that has no physically, spatial properties. I went to school to try to formalize those ideas. Turns out they’re rather useful for digital social networks, too. The ontological analog to spatial distance, when you have no space, is a graph of similarities.

This can be modeled by representing each item as a node in a weighted graph, where edges are weighted by dissimilarity rather than similarity. Highly similar items are connected by low-weight edges, while less similar items are connected by higher-weight edges. Distances in the graph, computed using standard shortest-path algorithms, then correspond to degrees of similarity. Closely related items are separated by short path lengths, while increasingly dissimilar items require longer paths through the graph. It turns out that attempts to generalize metric spaces for noetic domains—to model noetic/psychic spaces—are actually pretty useful for social media algorithms, lol.

BlueSky’s Solution To Moderating Is Moderating Without Moderating via Social Proximity

I have noticed a lot of people are confused about why some posts don’t show up on threads, though they are not labeled by the moderation layer. Bluesky has begun using what it calls social neighborhoods (or network proximity) as a ranking signal for replies in threads. Replies from people who are closer to you in the social graph, accounts you follow, interact with, or share mutual connections with, are prioritized and shown more prominently. Replies from accounts that are farther away in that network are down-ranked. They are pushed far down the thread or placed behind “hidden replies.”

Each person gets their own unique view of a thread based on their social graph. It creates the impression that replies from distant users simply don’t exist. This is true even though they’re still technically public and viewable if you expand the thread or adjust filters. Bluesky is explicitly using features of subgraphs to moderate without moderating. Their reasoning is that if you can’t see each other, you can’t harass each other. Ergo, there is nothing to moderate.

Bluesky mentions that here:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-31-2025-building-healthier-social-media-update

As a digression, I’m not going to lie: I really enjoyed working on software built on the AT protocol, but their fucking users are so goddamn weird. It’s sort of like enjoying building houses, but hating every single person who moves into them. But, you don’t have to deal with them because you’re just the contractor. That is how I feel about Bluesky. I hate the people. I really like the protocol and infrastructure.

I sort of am a sadist who does enjoy drama, so I do get schadenfreude from people with social media addictions and parasocial fixations who reply to random people on Bluesky, because they don’t realize their replies are disconnected from the author’s thread unless that person is within their network. They aren’t part of the conversation they think they are. They’re algorithmically isolated from everyone else. Their replies aren’t viewable from the author’s thread because of how Bluesky handles social neighborhoods.

Bluesky’s idea of social neighborhoods is about grouping users into overlapping clusters based on real interaction patterns rather than just the follow graph. Unlike Twitter, it does not treat the network as one big public square. Instead, it models networks of “social neighborhoods” made up of people you follow, people who follow you, people you frequently interact with, and people who are closely connected to those groups. They’re soft, probabilistic groupings rather than strict labels.

Everyone does not see the same replies. Bluesky is being a bit vague with “hidden.” Hidden means your reply is still anchored to the thread and can be expanded. There is another way Bluesky can handle this. Bluesky uses social neighborhoods to judge contextual relevance. Replies from people inside or near your social neighborhood are more likely to be shown inline with a thread, expanded by default, or served in feeds. Replies from outside your neighborhood are still public and still indexed, but they’re treated as lower-context contributions.

Basically, if you reply to a thread, you will see it anchored to the conversation, and everyone will see it in search results, as a hashtag, or from your profile, but it will not be accessible via the thread of the person you were replying to. It is like shadow-banning people from threads unless they are strongly networked.

Because people have not been working with the AT Protocol like I have, they assume they are shadow-banned across the entire Bluesky app view. No—everyone is automatically shadow-banned from everyone else unless they are within the same social neighborhood. In other words, you are not part of the conversation you think you are joining because you are not part of their social group.

Your replies will appear in profiles, hashtag feeds, or search results without being visually anchored to the full thread. Discovery impressions are neighborhood-agnostic: they serve content because it matches a query, tag, or activity stream. Once the reply is shown, the app then decides whether it’s worth pulling in the rest of the conversation for you. If the original author and most participants fall outside your neighborhood, Bluesky often chooses not to expand that context automatically.

Bluesky really is trying to avoid having to moderate, so this is their solution. Instead of banning or issuing takedown labels to DIDs, the system lets replies exist everywhere, but not in that particular instance of the thread.

I find this ironic because a large reason why many people are staying on Bluesky and not moving to the fediverse—thank God, because I do not want them there—is discoverability, virality, and engagement.

In case anyone is asking how I know so much about how these algorithms work: I was a consultant on a lot of these types of algorithms, so I certainly hope I’d know how they work, lol. No, you get no more details about the work I’ve done. I have no hand in the algorithm Bluesky is using, but I have proposed and implemented that type of algorithm before.

I have an interest in noetics and the noosphere. A large amount of my ontological work is an extension of my attempts to model domains that have no spatial or temporal coordinates. The question is how do you generalize a metric space that has no physically, spatial properties. I went to school to try to formalize those ideas. Turns out they’re rather useful for digital social networks, too. The ontological analog to spatial distance, when you have no space, is a graph of similarities.

This can be modeled by representing each item as a node in a weighted graph, where edges are weighted by dissimilarity rather than similarity. Highly similar items are connected by low-weight edges, while less similar items are connected by higher-weight edges. Distances in the graph, computed using standard shortest-path algorithms, then correspond to degrees of similarity. Closely related items are separated by short path lengths, while increasingly dissimilar items require longer paths through the graph. It turns out that attempts to generalize metric spaces for noetic domains—to model noetic/psychic spaces—are actually pretty useful for social media algorithms, lol.

The Virulent Infection of BlueSky by Extremely Online, Brain-Rotten Zombies from X Continues

So, it appears a new migration from Twitter to Bluesky is underway. It appears to be some of the most virulent former 4chan users possible. Yep, I got off Bluesky just in time, lol. I’ve been keeping tabs on a particularly virulent and toxic subgraph on Twitter for years. It pretty much stayed off Bluesky because they couldn’t act like abusive dumpster fires there. Welp, looks like they’re becoming more active on Bluesky. It’s not looking good over there.

That they are on the move says something. It’s sort of like how the US is suddenly a place that is hospitable to measles. It was all but eradicated here.

My husband likes to say that you can tell where not to be by where I am looking from somewhere else. I like fires. So if I am observing your platform or community from a distance, you probably don’t want to be there.

Edit:

I had originally posted the above on a now-defunct federated blog. It got blasted to Mastodon. Someone replied and asked what I think is causing this. I debated actually answering, then decided that I’ve had enough of the dumpster fire that is social media. I decided not to wade through social media tech discourse into what will mostly likely be an Internet argument with a complete stranger. I am a techie dragon, and I engage with things to learn how they work so I can tinker with them. I only engaged with tech discourse to get my hands on how the tech works. There’s nothing in it for me to be part of larger conversations. Arguing with random strangers on social media is not an epistemically useful format. I do think I should answer, though. Just on my blog.

I treat social media like I do an addictive substance. I do not believe in abstinence, but I do believe in harm-reduction paradigms, so when I see everyone overdosing on social media, I pull back and shut down a lot of accounts. The Fediverse instance where the first part of this blog post was posted has been taken down, moved to this blog, and this section appended to it.

I often use the word weeb pejoratively. Here, I am using it categorically. There really isn’t an “official” name outside of otaku or weeb culture. I am at the fringes and intersections of it as a furry. My husband is a millennial weeb. With that being said—

The migration is in large part because Bluesky is capturing the otaku/weeb niche of X. X hosted networks that were ecosystems of “anime fans.” These included anime and manga artists, doujin and hentai artists, VTuber fans, NSFW illustrators, fandom shitposters, niche fetish communities, and other chronically and extremely online content creators and influencers. That culture relied heavily on timelines, informal networks, and discovery through reposts, replies, and algorithmic amplification.

Elon Musk pretty much destabilized X’s ecosystems and social networks from multiple directions at once. Algorithm changes made reach inconsistent. Moderation created anxiety and uncertainty about what would get suppressed or unintentionally “viral”. Bots, engagement farming, and blue-check reply spam actively poisoned fandom conversations.

Bluesky is the memetic and cultural progeny of early imageboard cultures. I conducted a phylogenetic analysis of the memetics, which you can check out here:

Bluesky is a competitor of X for otaku and fandom communities. Bluesky has a lot of the aspects of old Twitter dynamics around which fandom culture evolved. Recently, Bluesky introduced something big in those communities: going live. Since X is no longer habitable for weebs, they are moving to Bluesky.

For example, the AT protocol already has PinkSea:

https://pinksea.art

And, of course, there is WAFRN:

https://app.wafrn.net

I cope and deal with issues via personal, private sublimation and not so much exhibitionism of my art or consumption of art. So, while I do make comic books and do a shit ton of weeby art, it’s for the purpose of sublimation, so I’m not too interested in being a part of a community. That’s a large reason I am not active in those spaces. I’m quite cynical, in general, so I am suspicious of any community — and I mean any community, at all. Honestly, I am mildly contemptuous of mass participation or any sense of belonging. So, my art stays private, because it is created for me – and just me.

The Virulent Infection of BlueSky by Extremely Online, Brain-Rotten Zombies from X Continues

So, it appears a new migration from Twitter to Bluesky is underway. It appears to be some of the most virulent former 4chan users possible. Yep, I got off Bluesky just in time, lol. I’ve been keeping tabs on a particularly virulent and toxic subgraph on Twitter for years. It pretty much stayed off Bluesky because they couldn’t act like abusive dumpster fires there. Welp, looks like they’re becoming more active on Bluesky. It’s not looking good over there.

That they are on the move says something. It’s sort of like how the US is suddenly a place that is hospitable to measles. It was all but eradicated here.

My husband likes to say that you can tell where not to be by where I am looking from somewhere else. I like fires. So if I am observing your platform or community from a distance, you probably don’t want to be there.

Edit:

I had originally posted the above on a now-defunct federated blog. It got blasted to Mastodon. Someone replied and asked what I think is causing this. I debated actually answering, then decided that I’ve had enough of the dumpster fire that is social media. I decided not to wade through social media tech discourse into what will mostly likely be an Internet argument with a complete stranger. I am a techie dragon, and I engage with things to learn how they work so I can tinker with them. I only engaged with tech discourse to get my hands on how the tech works. There’s nothing in it for me to be part of larger conversations. Arguing with random strangers on social media is not an epistemically useful format. I do think I should answer, though. Just on my blog.

I treat social media like I do an addictive substance. I do not believe in abstinence, but I do believe in harm-reduction paradigms, so when I see everyone overdosing on social media, I pull back and shut down a lot of accounts. The Fediverse instance where the first part of this blog post was posted has been taken down, moved to this blog, and this section appended to it.

I often use the word weeb pejoratively. Here, I am using it categorically. There really isn’t an “official” name outside of otaku or weeb culture. I am at the fringes and intersections of it as a furry. My husband is a millennial weeb. With that being said—

The migration is in large part because Bluesky is capturing the otaku/weeb niche of X. X hosted networks that were ecosystems of “anime fans.” These included anime and manga artists, doujin and hentai artists, VTuber fans, NSFW illustrators, fandom shitposters, niche fetish communities, and other chronically and extremely online content creators and influencers. That culture relied heavily on timelines, informal networks, and discovery through reposts, replies, and algorithmic amplification.

Elon Musk pretty much destabilized X’s ecosystems and social networks from multiple directions at once. Algorithm changes made reach inconsistent. Moderation created anxiety and uncertainty about what would get suppressed or unintentionally “viral”. Bots, engagement farming, and blue-check reply spam actively poisoned fandom conversations.

Bluesky is the memetic and cultural progeny of early imageboard cultures. I conducted a phylogenetic analysis of the memetics, which you can check out here:

Bluesky is a competitor of X for otaku and fandom communities. Bluesky has a lot of the aspects of old Twitter dynamics around which fandom culture evolved. Recently, Bluesky introduced something big in those communities: going live. Since X is no longer habitable for weebs, they are moving to Bluesky.

For example, the AT protocol already has PinkSea:

https://pinksea.art

And, of course, there is WAFRN:

https://app.wafrn.net

I cope and deal with issues via personal, private sublimation and not so much exhibitionism of my art or consumption of art. So, while I do make comic books and do a shit ton of weeby art, it’s for the purpose of sublimation, so I’m not too interested in being a part of a community. That’s a large reason I am not active in those spaces. I’m quite cynical, in general, so I am suspicious of any community — and I mean any community, at all. Honestly, I am mildly contemptuous of mass participation or any sense of belonging. So, my art stays private, because it is created for me – and just me.

The Virulent Infection of BlueSky by Extremely Online, Brain-Rotten Zombies from X Continues

So, it appears a new migration from Twitter to Bluesky is underway. It appears to be some of the most virulent former 4chan users possible. Yep, I got off Bluesky just in time, lol. I’ve been keeping tabs on a particularly virulent and toxic subgraph on Twitter for years. It pretty much stayed off Bluesky because they couldn’t act like abusive dumpster fires there. Welp, looks like they’re becoming more active on Bluesky. It’s not looking good over there.

That they are on the move says something. It’s sort of like how the US is suddenly a place that is hospitable to measles. It was all but eradicated here.

My husband likes to say that you can tell where not to be by where I am looking from somewhere else. I like fires. So if I am observing your platform or community from a distance, you probably don’t want to be there.

Edit:

I had originally posted the above on a now-defunct federated blog. It got blasted to Mastodon. Someone replied and asked what I think is causing this. I debated actually answering, then decided that I’ve had enough of the dumpster fire that is social media. I decided not to wade through social media tech discourse into what will mostly likely be an Internet argument with a complete stranger. I am a techie dragon, and I engage with things to learn how they work so I can tinker with them. I only engaged with tech discourse to get my hands on how the tech works. There’s nothing in it for me to be part of larger conversations. Arguing with random strangers on social media is not an epistemically useful format. I do think I should answer, though. Just on my blog.

I treat social media like I do an addictive substance. I do not believe in abstinence, but I do believe in harm-reduction paradigms, so when I see everyone overdosing on social media, I pull back and shut down a lot of accounts. The Fediverse instance where the first part of this blog post was posted has been taken down, moved to this blog, and this section appended to it.

I often use the word weeb pejoratively. Here, I am using it categorically. There really isn’t an “official” name outside of otaku or weeb culture. I am at the fringes and intersections of it as a furry. My husband is a millennial weeb. With that being said—

The migration is in large part because Bluesky is capturing the otaku/weeb niche of X. X hosted networks that were ecosystems of “anime fans.” These included anime and manga artists, doujin and hentai artists, VTuber fans, NSFW illustrators, fandom shitposters, niche fetish communities, and other chronically and extremely online content creators and influencers. That culture relied heavily on timelines, informal networks, and discovery through reposts, replies, and algorithmic amplification.

Elon Musk pretty much destabilized X’s ecosystems and social networks from multiple directions at once. Algorithm changes made reach inconsistent. Moderation created anxiety and uncertainty about what would get suppressed or unintentionally “viral”. Bots, engagement farming, and blue-check reply spam actively poisoned fandom conversations.

Bluesky is the memetic and cultural progeny of early imageboard cultures. I conducted a phylogenetic analysis of the memetics, which you can check out here:

Bluesky is a competitor of X for otaku and fandom communities. Bluesky has a lot of the aspects of old Twitter dynamics around which fandom culture evolved. Recently, Bluesky introduced something big in those communities: going live. Since X is no longer habitable for weebs, they are moving to Bluesky.

For example, the AT protocol already has PinkSea:

https://pinksea.art

And, of course, there is WAFRN:

https://app.wafrn.net

I cope and deal with issues via personal, private sublimation and not so much exhibitionism of my art or consumption of art. So, while I do make comic books and do a shit ton of weeby art, it’s for the purpose of sublimation, so I’m not too interested in being a part of a community. That’s a large reason I am not active in those spaces. I’m quite cynical, in general, so I am suspicious of any community — and I mean any community, at all. Honestly, I am mildly contemptuous of mass participation or any sense of belonging. So, my art stays private, because it is created for me – and just me.

Who Gets to Speak On Discord, Who Gets Banned, and Why That’s Always Political in Spaces with No Politics Rules

So, a thing I find very interesting about the fragility of the esteem among chronic Discord users is that it’s common for admins and moderators to ban or make fun of people who leave. Essentially, they’re responding to being rejected or not chosen, so they think it’s reasonable to retaliate

A Discord server I am lurking in has a “no politics” rule and is a religious, esoteric, and philosophical server. What I find very funny about this is that politics is:

“Politics is who gets what, when, and how.”

— Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936)

I find it very funny that the most minimal form of being “not political” in a virtual community is a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ). I was part of an IRC chaos magick channel when I was a teenager, and I submitted to a zine under my old handle (which is not Rayn) when I was 20. No, I’m not going to reveal the name I wrote under, which was published in chaos magick zines back in the day, because I’ve had a bucket of crazies following me around since 2008, with the insane network of anarchists circa 2020 being the latest instance.

ChanServ was a bot used on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) networks to manage channel operations such as bans, who got voiced, and permissions. Think of it as an early, early moderation bot. In an IRC TAZ, everyone who entered got all the permissions from Chanserv, so anyone could ban, voice, unban, deop, or op anyone else. No one had more power than anyone else, so there was minimal negotiation over channel resources. A TAZ is still an inherently political construct; however, it is a minimal political construct because there is minimal negotiation of resources and an equal, random, and chaotic authority structure. That’s not Discord, though.

Discord inherently has a hierarchical system defined by roles, a TOS, and members are expected to abide by the rules of that server. So, when you say there is a no-politics rule on Discord, you are inherently contradicting yourself because Discord is structurally political in how you, as a moderator, interact with others. How people negotiate conversations and interact with each other to access the resources of your Discord server is inherently political.

Discord’s structure makes any “no-politics” rule itself a political act. Moderators exercise power by granting, restricting, or revoking permissions, and that distribution of power is the very politics the rule tries to avoid. So while the intention is to keep discussions “apolitical,” it creates local Discord politics by determining who gets to speak and who gets silenced (e.g., banned, timed out, kicked, or limited to certain channels). A “no politics” rule shifts political dynamics into moderation decisions rather than eliminating them.

What prompted this was me observing a typical pragmatic versus moral realism argument that you’d see in any philosophy course or forum. I’m an academic and a computational scientist, but I don’t try to shut down any arguments with that, because that’s an explicit fallacy and a dishonest, bad-faith tactic.

Technically, I am a biologist. Yes, I have a biology degree and a biotech degree. I also have philosophy, mathematics, and computer science and engineering degrees under my belt. I have to work with people like this on a daily basis, and I find them insufferable, so the last thing I want to do in my free time after looking at stacks of dumbass papers is argue with people on Reddit or Discord when I could be fucking, getting fucked, or spending time with my husband. But, alas, they have no life. Keep in mind, as a computational biologist that reviews a lot of shit, I get paid to argue. These idiots are arguing on the Internet for free! The reason why Redditors, Reddit moderators, and Discord moderators get shat on so much is that all of their labor is unpaid! People with lives don’t take it that seriously!

On to the convo:

A new person in the community defined morals as: morals = {a, b, c} exhaustively. An established member of that community responded that, for them, morals are either {x, y, z…}, non-exhaustive and polymorphic, or not inherently defined by the tradition itself but supplied externally by the individual. The new person replied, effectively, “According to my definition of a, b, c, that still constitutes a moral framework.” An established member who is also a scientist pushed back as if no definition of morals had been proposed at all, when in actuality they were disagreeing with the scope and applicability of the given definition, not the act of defining itself.

By the way, the symbolic way I’m defining this is ambiguous. You have no clue what anything is; however, it is ontologically defined, and the logic makes sense. That is the problem. An ontological definition was given, so arguing that no definition was proposed—simply because they disagreed with it—is in bad faith. Personally, I am a constructivist, poststructuralist, pragmatist, instrumentalist, and anti-realist, so I don’t care too much about the realism of the ontological propositions and expressions. I am pointing out logical mistakes.

This is especially egregious when individuals rely on their authority in a domain where their degree is not pertinent. A well-known issue with scientists is that their curiosity can outstrip their morality. Essentially, an ethics board composed mostly of scientists without degrees in ethics, law, or philosophy will make poor decisions and saturate the political sphere they occupy with advocates and lobbyists to bend laws to their interests. Therefore, a board with no philosophers is pretty sinister.

Morals and ethics are philosophical problems. To my knowledge, many people who sit on ethics boards that seriously address ethical issues have philosophy, and not just astronomy, degrees. Relevant degrees include psychology, sociology, theology, philosophy, etc. For example, I have a philosophy degree, so I am technically qualified and credentialed by a university to have these discussions. An astronomy degree alone does not make someone qualified to discuss ethics—maybe if they also had a theology degree?

The thing I find really funny about this group is that they avoid dilemmas. Morals and ethics are developed through ethical dilemmas. Their response to any type of dilemma is to exert their local authority and exclude, deny, or shut down conversations.

The difference between science and philosophy is that science is a little less messy and more defined. We can all see something and agree on what we see, right? The difference with philosophical questions and moral dilemmas is that they are relatively open-ended and ambiguous. It’s really amusing to me how those who try to argue philosophy are uncomfortable with indefinite answers that are open to interpretation.

It’s just funny how they tacitly assume that they are the only academics in their field in existence and that their opinion on things is the consensus, especially on metaphysical issues where there is no consensus. No human knows what the right thing to do is all the time. It’s great to know that they have somehow achieved a level of inhuman perfection.

Who Gets to Speak On Discord, Who Gets Banned, and Why That’s Always Political in Spaces with No Politics Rules

So, a thing I find very interesting about the fragility of the esteem among chronic Discord users is that it’s common for admins and moderators to ban or make fun of people who leave. Essentially, they’re responding to being rejected or not chosen, so they think it’s reasonable to retaliate

A Discord server I am lurking in has a “no politics” rule and is a religious, esoteric, and philosophical server. What I find very funny about this is that politics is:

“Politics is who gets what, when, and how.”

— Harold D. Lasswell, Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936)

I find it very funny that the most minimal form of being “not political” in a virtual community is a Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ). I was part of an IRC chaos magick channel when I was a teenager, and I submitted to a zine under my old handle (which is not Rayn) when I was 20. No, I’m not going to reveal the name I wrote under, which was published in chaos magick zines back in the day, because I’ve had a bucket of crazies following me around since 2008, with the insane network of anarchists circa 2020 being the latest instance.

ChanServ was a bot used on IRC (Internet Relay Chat) networks to manage channel operations such as bans, who got voiced, and permissions. Think of it as an early, early moderation bot. In an IRC TAZ, everyone who entered got all the permissions from Chanserv, so anyone could ban, voice, unban, deop, or op anyone else. No one had more power than anyone else, so there was minimal negotiation over channel resources. A TAZ is still an inherently political construct; however, it is a minimal political construct because there is minimal negotiation of resources and an equal, random, and chaotic authority structure. That’s not Discord, though.

Discord inherently has a hierarchical system defined by roles, a TOS, and members are expected to abide by the rules of that server. So, when you say there is a no-politics rule on Discord, you are inherently contradicting yourself because Discord is structurally political in how you, as a moderator, interact with others. How people negotiate conversations and interact with each other to access the resources of your Discord server is inherently political.

Discord’s structure makes any “no-politics” rule itself a political act. Moderators exercise power by granting, restricting, or revoking permissions, and that distribution of power is the very politics the rule tries to avoid. So while the intention is to keep discussions “apolitical,” it creates local Discord politics by determining who gets to speak and who gets silenced (e.g., banned, timed out, kicked, or limited to certain channels). A “no politics” rule shifts political dynamics into moderation decisions rather than eliminating them.

What prompted this was me observing a typical pragmatic versus moral realism argument that you’d see in any philosophy course or forum. I’m an academic and a computational scientist, but I don’t try to shut down any arguments with that, because that’s an explicit fallacy and a dishonest, bad-faith tactic.

Technically, I am a biologist. Yes, I have a biology degree and a biotech degree. I also have philosophy, mathematics, and computer science and engineering degrees under my belt. I have to work with people like this on a daily basis, and I find them insufferable, so the last thing I want to do in my free time after looking at stacks of dumbass papers is argue with people on Reddit or Discord when I could be fucking, getting fucked, or spending time with my husband. But, alas, they have no life. Keep in mind, as a computational biologist that reviews a lot of shit, I get paid to argue. These idiots are arguing on the Internet for free! The reason why Redditors, Reddit moderators, and Discord moderators get shat on so much is that all of their labor is unpaid! People with lives don’t take it that seriously!

On to the convo:

A new person in the community defined morals as: morals = {a, b, c} exhaustively. An established member of that community responded that, for them, morals are either {x, y, z…}, non-exhaustive and polymorphic, or not inherently defined by the tradition itself but supplied externally by the individual. The new person replied, effectively, “According to my definition of a, b, c, that still constitutes a moral framework.” An established member who is also a scientist pushed back as if no definition of morals had been proposed at all, when in actuality they were disagreeing with the scope and applicability of the given definition, not the act of defining itself.

By the way, the symbolic way I’m defining this is ambiguous. You have no clue what anything is; however, it is ontologically defined, and the logic makes sense. That is the problem. An ontological definition was given, so arguing that no definition was proposed—simply because they disagreed with it—is in bad faith. Personally, I am a constructivist, poststructuralist, pragmatist, instrumentalist, and anti-realist, so I don’t care too much about the realism of the ontological propositions and expressions. I am pointing out logical mistakes.

This is especially egregious when individuals rely on their authority in a domain where their degree is not pertinent. A well-known issue with scientists is that their curiosity can outstrip their morality. Essentially, an ethics board composed mostly of scientists without degrees in ethics, law, or philosophy will make poor decisions and saturate the political sphere they occupy with advocates and lobbyists to bend laws to their interests. Therefore, a board with no philosophers is pretty sinister.

Morals and ethics are philosophical problems. To my knowledge, many people who sit on ethics boards that seriously address ethical issues have philosophy, and not just astronomy, degrees. Relevant degrees include psychology, sociology, theology, philosophy, etc. For example, I have a philosophy degree, so I am technically qualified and credentialed by a university to have these discussions. An astronomy degree alone does not make someone qualified to discuss ethics—maybe if they also had a theology degree?

The thing I find really funny about this group is that they avoid dilemmas. Morals and ethics are developed through ethical dilemmas. Their response to any type of dilemma is to exert their local authority and exclude, deny, or shut down conversations.

The difference between science and philosophy is that science is a little less messy and more defined. We can all see something and agree on what we see, right? The difference with philosophical questions and moral dilemmas is that they are relatively open-ended and ambiguous. It’s really amusing to me how those who try to argue philosophy are uncomfortable with indefinite answers that are open to interpretation.

It’s just funny how they tacitly assume that they are the only academics in their field in existence and that their opinion on things is the consensus, especially on metaphysical issues where there is no consensus. No human knows what the right thing to do is all the time. It’s great to know that they have somehow achieved a level of inhuman perfection.

BlueSky Is A Platform For Attention Whores With No Standards

I’m convinced that Bluesky is the platform for attention-whores who perform and humiliate themselves for validation and affirmation. It’s really sad. I don’t feel bad when bad things happen to them as a consequence because they were already warned, yet they prioritize fitting into a culture and refuse to deal with their feelings of inadequacy. The reason they stay is that the bar is low for meaningful engagement, allowing them to indulge in their obsessions and compulsions while being rewarded for self-destructive behavior. It truly is quite pathetic.

I initially joined Bluesky for the sexual content because people on Mastodon have little interest in sex and much more elaborate norms around sexuality. Contrary to what people think of me, I don’t actually use social media in the conventional way most people do. I view it on an abstract, non-algorithmically served layer via my network analysis tools, and I interact with YouTube in a very constrained way. So, I wasn’t aware of how bad things were until I started using Bluesky conventionally. The men on Bluesky are just plain repulsive to me. Desperation, neediness, lack of independence, and obsessively posting about a single topic (like sex, religion, or politics), instead of developing a genuine hobby that demonstrates skill, progress, and mastery, are major turn-offs. I find a lack of standards absolutely disgusting.

For example, if someone abhorrent gives you a compliment, you don’t accept it. If an abhorrent person follows you, you block them. Yet what I see are men posting sexual content and seeking attention and validation from anyone, regardless of who it’s coming from. If I look through someone’s activity and see nothing but low-effort posts interacting with nothing but sexual content or obsessive engagement with that type of content, I lose interest immediately.

A reason why my husband has held my attention for over a decade is that there is always something new with him. He is always randomly looking into developing a new skill. One day, he started randomly speaking Mandarin to me, which I did not know he knew how to speak. He had told me he had been learning Mandarin. Yes, my husband is neurodivergent and his interests are cars, but that doesn’t displace all other things. Another reason why my husband holds my attention is that he can keep a conversation going and match anyone’s changes. It’s not one ritualistic or compulsive thing every single fucking day.

A very real consequence of the lack of standards in gay sexual spaces, especially given that many misogynistic, homophobic far-right men suppress their homosexual attractions, is that many of the fetishes in gay sexual spaces are reminiscent of manosphere content. Because of what I do for a living, I have access to audience segmentation metrics and social embeddings of how content is served. Manosphere content clusters with homoerotic content that men consume. At some point, obsession became so normalized that people stopped realizing it was problematic.

Unless gay men set boundaries and tell manosphere bros, “we’re not having that,” you’ll see what I see on Bluesky. I’m actually very sexual myself, and I frequently go to bathhouses—those that have very explicit rules—sex parties, and orgies.

The funny thing is that I have had plenty of really deep philosophical conversations sitting in the hot tub of a bathhouse with naked gay men. Because of health codes and all that, you can’t do sexual things in the pool or the hot tub, so those areas were places for genuine play and conversation, while spots like the saunas were the fuck spots. I recall a particularly interesting conversation I had with an older gay man who had been going to that bathhouse since the ’80s. He explained to me the social context of the HIV epidemic and how, basically, no one knew it was sexually transmitted, so everyone was still barebacking at that exact same bathhouse we were in.

The issue here is people who fuck and sexually perform for awful people who want to murder them because they have absolutely no fucking standards and are so emotionally needy that they forgo all forms of self-preservation. I’m a computer scientist, so I have access to a lot of data tools. I can tell you for a fact that there is a strong correlation between men who want to murder gay men and trans people and the ones liking, engaging in parasocial dynamics with, and commenting in their replies. You’re willing to take sexual attention from people who want to kill you, and that blows my mind.

In their minds, Bluesky is better if it is not a Nazi strip bar but a Nazi BDSM-furry-kink club? What the ever-loving fuck?! Honestly, I watch a lot of feminist content that rips manosphere content apart, so much so that I can instantly recognize coded things. The “fuck no!” moment for me is when I saw manosphere-coded things being fetishized in the ego networks of large gay adult content creators and OnlyFans creators in social network embeddings. It’s not like it is insidious. If I see it, everyone else sees it; they are just ignoring it because they are prioritizing sexual validation and their obsessions.

BlueSky Is A Platform For Attention Whores With No Standards

I’m convinced that Bluesky is the platform for attention-whores who perform and humiliate themselves for validation and affirmation. It’s really sad. I don’t feel bad when bad things happen to them as a consequence because they were already warned, yet they prioritize fitting into a culture and refuse to deal with their feelings of inadequacy. The reason they stay is that the bar is low for meaningful engagement, allowing them to indulge in their obsessions and compulsions while being rewarded for self-destructive behavior. It truly is quite pathetic.

I initially joined Bluesky for the sexual content because people on Mastodon have little interest in sex and much more elaborate norms around sexuality. Contrary to what people think of me, I don’t actually use social media in the conventional way most people do. I view it on an abstract, non-algorithmically served layer via my network analysis tools, and I interact with YouTube in a very constrained way. So, I wasn’t aware of how bad things were until I started using Bluesky conventionally. The men on Bluesky are just plain repulsive to me. Desperation, neediness, lack of independence, and obsessively posting about a single topic (like sex, religion, or politics), instead of developing a genuine hobby that demonstrates skill, progress, and mastery, are major turn-offs. I find a lack of standards absolutely disgusting.

For example, if someone abhorrent gives you a compliment, you don’t accept it. If an abhorrent person follows you, you block them. Yet what I see are men posting sexual content and seeking attention and validation from anyone, regardless of who it’s coming from. If I look through someone’s activity and see nothing but low-effort posts interacting with nothing but sexual content or obsessive engagement with that type of content, I lose interest immediately.

A reason why my husband has held my attention for over a decade is that there is always something new with him. He is always randomly looking into developing a new skill. One day, he started randomly speaking Mandarin to me, which I did not know he knew how to speak. He had told me he had been learning Mandarin. Yes, my husband is neurodivergent and his interests are cars, but that doesn’t displace all other things. Another reason why my husband holds my attention is that he can keep a conversation going and match anyone’s changes. It’s not one ritualistic or compulsive thing every single fucking day.

A very real consequence of the lack of standards in gay sexual spaces, especially given that many misogynistic, homophobic far-right men suppress their homosexual attractions, is that many of the fetishes in gay sexual spaces are reminiscent of manosphere content. Because of what I do for a living, I have access to audience segmentation metrics and social embeddings of how content is served. Manosphere content clusters with homoerotic content that men consume. At some point, obsession became so normalized that people stopped realizing it was problematic.

Unless gay men set boundaries and tell manosphere bros, “we’re not having that,” you’ll see what I see on Bluesky. I’m actually very sexual myself, and I frequently go to bathhouses—those that have very explicit rules—sex parties, and orgies.

The funny thing is that I have had plenty of really deep philosophical conversations sitting in the hot tub of a bathhouse with naked gay men. Because of health codes and all that, you can’t do sexual things in the pool or the hot tub, so those areas were places for genuine play and conversation, while spots like the saunas were the fuck spots. I recall a particularly interesting conversation I had with an older gay man who had been going to that bathhouse since the ’80s. He explained to me the social context of the HIV epidemic and how, basically, no one knew it was sexually transmitted, so everyone was still barebacking at that exact same bathhouse we were in.

The issue here is people who fuck and sexually perform for awful people who want to murder them because they have absolutely no fucking standards and are so emotionally needy that they forgo all forms of self-preservation. I’m a computer scientist, so I have access to a lot of data tools. I can tell you for a fact that there is a strong correlation between men who want to murder gay men and trans people and the ones liking, engaging in parasocial dynamics with, and commenting in their replies. You’re willing to take sexual attention from people who want to kill you, and that blows my mind.

In their minds, Bluesky is better if it is not a Nazi strip bar but a Nazi BDSM-furry-kink club? What the ever-loving fuck?! Honestly, I watch a lot of feminist content that rips manosphere content apart, so much so that I can instantly recognize coded things. The “fuck no!” moment for me is when I saw manosphere-coded things being fetishized in the ego networks of large gay adult content creators and OnlyFans creators in social network embeddings. It’s not like it is insidious. If I see it, everyone else sees it; they are just ignoring it because they are prioritizing sexual validation and their obsessions.

Bluesky is An Ontological Space for Sadomasochism, Trolling, & Schadenfreude

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.

Bluesky is An Ontological Space for Sadomasochism, Trolling, & Schadenfreude

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.

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.

Fediverse Reactions

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