someone asked the Bluesky elders to tell stories about when the place was fun. i have one that sounds made up, and the part that sounds most made up is the math.
in the summer of 2023, i used to scroll a fire-hose feed of labeled posts every night at 10 p.m. and reskeet every dick pic i saw. every one. this was an achievable task on a social network, which should tell you roughly how many people were in the room.
the ritual was ridiculous. it was also a pretty good measure of what early Bluesky felt like: small enough to develop customs that were neither product features nor content strategies. you could just decide it was dick o’clock and, for a little while, that became a thing other people might recognize.
the app was still being assembled around us
i arrived on June 1, 2023, with an invite from a former coworker. there was a “What’s Hot Classic” feed, an Android app that had several creative interpretations of a swipe, and a thing called Hellthread that turned notifications into an involuntary group chat. the interface had seams. people immediately started living in them.
the custom feeds made the network feel less like a single room than a building whose occupants kept knocking holes between apartments. the Hellthread people were making lore and mutual aid and terrible jokes. somebody else could build a feed for an entirely different fixation. mine, apparently, included performing a nightly public service for the labeled-post enthusiasts.
the original “my month in hell” is the messy, contemporaneous version of what that community meant to me. i wrote it in July 2023, while i was still furious about losing the notification behavior that made Hellthread feel like a chat room. three years later, i’m less interested in claiming the broken app was secretly perfect. it wasn’t. i’m interested in why a broken app gave people enough room to invent an evening.
nostalgia needs its moderation settings on
“the good ol’ days” can be an annoyingly selective memory. early Bluesky was chaotic in ways that were funny and ways that were harmful. the problems around moderation, racism, and who got to feel comfortable there were real. small communities can be warm; they can also make every conflict feel like it is happening at your kitchen table.
i don’t want the site restored to its 2023 bugs, or its 2023 capacity. i want to remember that some of the fun came from people making things together without first asking whether those things could scale. a feed could be a hangout. a notification malfunction could be a gathering place. a stranger could make an incredibly dumb joke and a dozen people would keep it going longer than was medically advisable.
and, at 10 p.m., the entire labeled fire hose could be small enough for one gay man with a phone to finish his rounds. i saw some things i cannot unsee. i also saw a social network where you could still reach the end.
Historical app screenshots from Bluesky’s June 2023 beta update and its July 2023 custom feeds post, reproduced with attribution for commentary.
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