For somebody of my generation, I think I got into social media fairly quickly. Not all aspects of social media, mainly just one, Twitter. I loved Twitter from the beginning, and found it enormously useful.
Two aspects in particular: It gave me access to a whole range of news and comment. I got links to good articles in media outlets like the National Catholic Reporter, La Croix, and many others. I learned through it what was happening in the various Church Reform movements around the world.
Secondly, I had built up quite a large following and it provided me with the means of publicising whatever I was involved in myself, including tweeting the links to whatever I put up on this blog. This was very helpful in relation to my involvement with the Association of Catholic Priests, and other activities. Often, if I wanted to go public on something, all I needed to do was to tweet about it, and various media people who followed me would take up the topic.
I know there was a certain amount of nasty and abusive content on the site, but I found the ‘block’ facility great, and I used it frequently.
All in all, I did like Twitter.
And then Musk took it over, and things began to change. The content became more political and abrasive, and there seemed to be less effort to control the ugly and abusive side of it. Indeed, Musk himself was one of the main promoters of this time of content. I know that a lot of the people I knew and followed on twitter now disappeared, presumably they had left the site, and it became less and less useful for what I wanted from it. But I persevered, partly because I didn’t know of anyplace better to move to. But the U.S. election was the final nail in the coffin; it seemed that Musk had taken it over completely, and every second entry was from himself.
So I made my decision, and withdrew from X. I looked around for some alternative, and eventually joined Bluesky. It is American, and very much the home of the anti-Trump people, mostly Democrats. There is a nice atmosphere to it, and the entries by and large are interesting. But there seems to be very few Irish people involved. I know it is new, and is having a big increase in numbers who joined it for much the same reason as myself, – they couldn’t stand Musk. But I miss all my followers in Twitter, and I don’t even have any way now to publicise whatever I put on this blog!
But that’s life. Nothing lasts, and we have to make the best of it.
