Tag: bluesky

Everything Tech

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September 30, 2026

the head of trust and safety should not have an automated enemies list

a personal block is a boundary. a trust-and-safety chief automating one is a governance problem wearing the skin of a vibe check. Read more →

a personal block is a boundary. a head of trust and safety automating one is a governance problem wearing the skin of a vibe check.

this morning, Andrew discovered that Aaron Rodericks had blocked him on Bluesky. Rodericks’s profile identifies him as Bluesky’s Head of Trust and Safety and currently announces, “Automation enabled on interactions — abuse will generate auto-blocks.” Rodericks also posted that he had enabled automated block actions so he could remain “Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In my lane. Focused. Flourishing.”

I didn’t even call the dumb motherfucker out for liking questionable skeets or anything. smdh
— schweg, but spooky (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-30T12:11:42.096Z

The block notice Andrew posted on September 30. Screenshot: @schwegler.lol on Bluesky.

maybe every account caught by that automation deserved the block. maybe none did. that is not the interesting part, because a user does not owe anybody a hearing before removing them from a feed. the block button exists precisely so ordinary people can stop litigating whether somebody has earned access to them.

the problem is that this is not an ordinary account. the person pressing—or delegating—the button also leads the team that can label content, restrict visibility, suspend accounts, and decide what counts as abuse across the service. the personal preference and the institutional judgment live inside one profile, and an automated system is apparently helping sort the guest list.

the block button has two jobs now

Bluesky’s founding moderation pitch was built around separating powers. instead of one company making every fine-grained decision, users could choose additional labelers, filters, and community rules. the company described moderation as customizable infrastructure where human and automated systems work together, with user agency as the point.

that is a genuinely better idea than pretending one universal feed can settle every argument on earth. it also makes this particular mess look worse. composable moderation depends on people understanding which layer is acting on them. did a person set a private boundary? did an automated tool classify an interaction as abuse? did a platform official exercise power? when all three wear the same handle, “user choice” begins to resemble the manager personally working the velvet rope.

Automated block actions on my account, so that I can stay Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In my lane. Focused. Flourishing.TBH it was well overdue.
— Aaron Rodericks (@aaron.bsky.team) 2026-09-30T12:33:40.828Z

Aaron Rodericks identifies himself as Bluesky’s Head of Trust and Safety. Image: @aaron.bsky.team.

Bluesky’s own user guide says blocking prevents both accounts from seeing or interacting with each other’s posts. that is fine for users. it becomes structurally strange when the blocked person is still subject to the blocker’s professional authority. Andrew put it neatly: if the head of trust and safety blocks you, he also should not get to use moderation tools to inspect your posts.

it should be a rule that if the head of trust and safety blocks you that he also can’t use his moderating tools to see your skeets
— schweg, but spooky (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-30T12:16:22.419Z

due process cannot be a mood

this does not require executives to accept unlimited abuse. it requires boring procedures, which is how organizations keep personal conflict from becoming policy. staff accounts can mute freely. blocks can trigger disclosure and recusal. automated lists can be documented, appealable, and separated from enforcement tools. another moderator can review reports involving somebody their boss has personally blocked. none of this is exotic. it is the administrative equivalent of not letting the referee place bets from the field.

Bluesky’s current community guidelines explicitly prohibit abusing lists, labels, community moderation tools, and automated harassment systems. the company also says baseline enforcement requires careful judgment and that appeals exist when it gets something wrong. those promises need to apply most visibly when the dispute involves the person running trust and safety. otherwise the lesson is that automation creates accountability for users and plausible deniability for management.

the internet has spent years discovering that content moderation is unavoidable and power without transparency is intolerable. Bluesky was supposed to improve that bargain by making moderation plural, legible, and user-controlled. an automated enemies list attached to the trust-and-safety chief’s personal account moves in the opposite direction. it collapses a private annoyance, a machine judgment, and an institutional hierarchy into one cheerful little “Unbothered” button.

being unbothered is a reasonable goal for a person. it is not a governance model.
1

Everything

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September 25, 2026

bluesky was small enough to reskeet every dick at 10 p.m.

a 10 p.m. dick-pic reskeet ritual was once logistically possible. that says something about the weird, tiny, communal Bluesky of summer 2023. Read more →

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.

Dear Bluesky Elders,Tell us stories of the days when Bluesky was fun.
— TwoSense (@twosense.bsky.social) 2026-09-25T16:07:36.545Z

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.

i used to reskeet EVERY dick pic on this platform each night at 10pm–a thing that was doable because of a fire-hose feed of all labeled posts i would scroll through combined with a relatively low volume overall many things i've seen that i can't unsee in that feed
— schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-25T16:51:47.684Z

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 feed tabs in July 2023, when the place still felt like an experiment you could poke. Screenshot: Bluesky, used for commentary.

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.

A June 2023 moderation screen: even the settings were still taking shape. Screenshot: Bluesky, used for commentary.

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.
Everything

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September 11, 2026

millennials are processing 9/11 normally, by which i mean posting

twenty-five years after 9/11, millennials are commemorating the formative trauma of our youth in the most emotionally healthy way available to us:… Read more →

i was twelve when 9/11 happened, which puts me in a very specific millennial demographic: old enough to remember that day as an actual day, and young enough that basically the entire rest of my life happened inside the world it built.

twenty-five years later, the internet has commemorated this in the most emotionally healthy way available to us: an absolutely deranged posting cycle.

— Toronto Man (@fucklandlords.com) 2026-09-11T15:27:51.615Z

there is something very millennial about the speed with which a foundational trauma became a set of reusable cultural objects. the school television. the president getting whispered to. the airport. the flag graphics. the phrase “never forget.” the exact kind of cable-news lower third that can still make your nervous system briefly sit up straight.

and then, because we had to keep living for another quarter-century, all of that eventually became material.

https://bsky.app/profile/britculpsapp.bsky.social/post/3k75ttdfjgw2f

the joke is not that 9/11 was funny

the joke is that we spent twenty-five years being told there was one correct emotional register for it while almost everything built around that grief became progressively stranger.

there was the genuine horror, and then there was the political mythology. there was mourning, and then there were wars, surveillance, airport security theater, commemorative merchandise, campaign speeches, corporate remembrance posts, and every public figure in america discovering that “9/11” could be inserted into a sentence whenever the sentence needed instant moral weight.

eventually the solemnity itself became part of the thing being processed.

President George W. Bush speaks with Vice President Dick Cheney aboard Air Force One, Sept. 11, 2001. White House photo by Eric Draper; public domain. Source.

Google's 9/11 Homepage Design Stirs Controversy
— The Onion (@theonion.com) 2026-09-11T14:00:40.782481218Z

The Onion understood this almost immediately. satire after 9/11 worked because the national mood was already surreal: normal life had stopped, everyone was scared, and at the same time people still had jobs, errands, television, bad relationships, and a powerful biological need to care about stupid bullshit again.

that tension never really went away. it just got old enough to develop back pain.

we also got twenty-five years of consequences

millennial 9/11 humor is dark because the history after 9/11 was dark. we watched a catastrophe become a permission slip for things that were supposed to be temporary and then simply became the furniture: the Patriot Act, the forever-war mentality, suspicion as public policy, and the idea that taking your shoes off for a flight was somehow a civic sacrament.

President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and staff in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, Sept. 11, 2001. White House photo; public domain. Source: George W. Bush Presidential Library.

— Toronto Man (@fucklandlords.com) 2026-09-10T00:16:20.398Z

so yes, a lot of the jokes are tasteless. some are aggressively stupid. several require the kind of background knowledge that makes you realize your youth is now a historical period with archival footage.

but i do not think the existence of the jokes means people forgot what happened. for millennials, it can mean almost the opposite. you do not build this much elaborate nonsense around something that left no mark.

https://bsky.app/profile/slclunk.com/post/3m7qrtc4ia22g

history becomes folklore faster than anybody wants

there are adults now who were born after 9/11. there are younger adults who know it primarily through documentaries, politics, memes, old news clips, and the fact that every millennial can suddenly become somebody’s grandfather and tell you exactly where the classroom television was positioned.

that is maybe the strangest part of the 25th anniversary. this thing that still feels like the dividing line between “before” and “after” in my own memory is becoming history in the normal way history does: flattened, remixed, misremembered, made into jokes, rediscovered by people who were not there, and occasionally explained very badly by those of us who were.

none of that makes the dead less dead, or the grief less real. it just means the living kept being alive afterward, which is unfortunately a very messy condition.

anyway, happy 25th anniversary to the event that permanently changed airport shoes, american politics, and millennial brain chemistry.
4

Everything

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September 6, 2026

the freezer has become a very small evidence locker

i have two boxes of recalled fruit bars, one obvious decision, and a brain determined to open negotiations. Read more →

i currently have two boxes of fruit bars in my freezer that may contain glass, which means the freezer has become a very small evidence locker.

can't bring myself to throw away the two boxes of possibly-glass-contaminated outshine bars but am also too afraid to eat them
— schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-09-06T23:38:08.008Z

the correct decision is not complicated. Dreyer’s says to throw the affected bars away or return them for a full refund. there have been no reported injuries, and i would like to continue contributing to that statistic.

unfortunately, the human brain did not evolve around nationwide frozen-dessert recalls. it evolved around scarcity, attachment, and standing in front of an open freezer thinking, “but i paid for those.”

first, check the boxes

one of five recalled flavors, wearing the color of a warning label that has been trying to seem fun. product image: Outshine / PR Newswire.

the August 16 recall notice from Dreyer’s covers specific batches of five Outshine flavors: Strawberry, Grape, Watermelon, Black Cherry, and Tangerine. it applies to the six-count boxes of 2.5-ounce paddle bars distributed nationwide.

it does not cover every Outshine product. the useful part is on the bottom of the box: compare the UPC, batch code, and best-before date with the company’s list. the affected UPCs are 041548610047 for Strawberry, 041548244044 for Grape, 041548413624 for Watermelon, 041548000121 for Black Cherry, and 041548612041 for Tangerine.

the batch list is long enough that i am not going to make anyone trust a transcription from a personal blog when the original recall notice exists. use the company table. this is one of the rare situations where “go read the spreadsheet” is an act of care.

the sunk cost is approximately one popsicle

watermelon remains refreshing; the possibility of glass has been less well received. product image: Outshine / PR Newswire.

if the codes match, the bars are not a challenge, a dare, or a chance to develop a new texture vocabulary. return them or dispose of them. anyone worried about an injury should contact a healthcare provider.

i know this. i also know that throwing away unopened food feels wrong in a way that can briefly overpower the much more relevant wrongness of possibly swallowing glass. the product has crossed from “food” into “object i purchased,” and apparently my sense of stewardship remains active after its culinary career has ended.

this is sunk-cost fallacy with freezer burn. keeping the boxes cannot recover the money. eating the bars cannot vindicate the purchase. it can only convert a recall notice into a medical anecdote, and i already have enough stories that begin with “in retrospect.”

a refund is the available third path

the recall says affected products can be returned to the place of purchase for a full refund. this is useful because my brain has framed the situation as a choice between wasting food and becoming afraid of dessert forever. there is, in fact, a boring administrative option. boring administrative options save lives.

so the boxes are leaving the freezer. not because i have conquered irrational attachment, but because i have been reminded there may be paperwork that lets me keep both my money and the structural integrity of my mouth.

sometimes growth is just finally accepting that a frozen fruit bar should not have a risk profile.
2

schwegler Site News

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August 29, 2026

god forbid a bitch own a weird little website

A personal site can still be a garden, junk drawer, clubhouse, and tiny act of resistance against the feed. Read more →

“god forbid a bitch name his blog whimsically”

god forbid a bitch name his blog whimsically
— schweg, (@schwegler.lol) 2026-08-29T21:00:42.603Z

i posted that as a joke, but it is also the entire operating theory behind tacobout.online

a personal website should have a name you have to explain. it should contain at least three subjects a growth consultant would beg you to split into separate brands. it should occasionally look like somebody opened a junk drawer and installed an rss feed in it

the vertical is a lie

platforms want a clean answer to “what do you post about?” because clean answers are easier to package. tech account. politics account. reality tv account. music account. gay little pop-culture account. choose a lane, feed the recommendation engine, become legible to the machine

but a person is not a vertical. a person is twenty-seven browser tabs, one of them playing audio from somewhere, three of them technically research, and at least one open because the headline made you mad six hours ago

in the space of two days this site went from Big Brother strategy pathology to an ATProto moderation tool, Geese marketing discourse, krishnacore, and an Avengers multiverse collision. that is not editorial confusion. that is what a brain looks like when nobody has forced it into a content calendar

The camera roll and the personal blog share a basic instinct: save the small, specific thing before the feed swallows it.

the camera roll and the blog are cousins

this flower has been sitting in my IMG library for years. it does not have a discourse attached to it. it does not need a hot take, an affiliate link, or a call to action. i liked it enough to save it

that is still one of the best reasons to put anything on the internet

the camera roll says: this happened in front of me and i wanted another look. the personal blog says: this passed through my head and i wanted somewhere it would not immediately disappear. both are ways of refusing the feed’s insistence that whatever is newest is whatever matters

ownership is not the same thing as audience

Bluesky and Mastodon are better than most platforms at letting posts point outward. rss is still sitting there, unbothered and useful, waiting for everybody to remember it never asked an algorithm for permission. open protocols make it possible to build small, nosy tools when a social platform is missing exactly one fact you want to know

that is how i ended up building a client-side ATProto tool for checking which of your mutuals already block an account. sometimes a post explains a thought. sometimes a post has buttons and performs set intersection

Small tools are personal posts with inputs: a hyperfixation made clickable.

none of that makes the domain a fortress. owning a site does not mean pretending the social web is beneath you; it means having a home to return to after visiting everybody else’s apartments

the feeds are where the conversation happens. the site is where the conversation gets furniture

the weird name is the point

there is no conversion funnel here. no promise that every post will reinforce a niche. the same person can care about open protocols, reality-show social strategy, queer pop culture, old songs, labor, games, movies, and whether the kitchen happens to be clean at the same time the pantry is full

that mess is not a failure to brand the self. it is the self

so yes, the blog is named tacobout.online. god forbid a bitch own a weird little corner of the internet and put a whimsical sign over the door
2

Projects schwegler

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August 28, 2026

the art of the block: building an atproto tool for gut-checking your next block

A lightweight, client-side ATProto browser tool for Bluesky that lets you gut-check target accounts against your mutual followers and explore a moot… Read more →

There is a very specific gut-check that happens when you come across a chaotic account or bad-faith actor on your timeline. Before hitting the block button, you almost instinctively wonder: is it just me, or have my mutuals already blocked this person?

Naturally, as someone who spends entirely too much time thinking about social graph mechanics and relational data structures, I wanted a clean, reliable way to answer that question. I wanted to see which of my mutual followers (“moots”) are blocking a specific target account—and discover the broader moderation consensus across my network. To make that happen, I built a small tool.

Enter bsky-mutual-blocks: a lightweight, client-side browser app built on Bluesky and ATProto that lets you gut-check target accounts against your mutual follower network and explore a live moot block leaderboard.

bsky-mutual-blocks visualizes which mutual followers block a target account and ranks which moots have the most blocks from other moots.

the beauty of open protocols (and why this works)

On traditional siloed platforms, analyzing moderation consensus across your social circle is essentially impossible. Data is locked behind proprietary servers, rate limits are punitive, and moderation actions are treated like state secrets.

Bluesky and the AT Protocol completely change the paradigm. Because user repositories on ATProto are publicly discoverable collections of structured, signed data—including app.bsky.graph.block and follow records—you don’t need privileged backend access to inspect public network topology.

When you want to gut-check a target account, the client identifies your mutual followers (bidirectional follows) and crawls their public block records. If multiple people in your trusted circle have already created signed block records pointing at that target’s DID, that overlap is revealed through transparent, client-side set intersection.

Public signed records in ATProto repositories allow client-side set intersection to reveal which mutuals block a given account.

how it’s built & what it actually does

I designed the app to be fast, privacy-preserving, zero-maintenance, and centered around two primary workflows:

1. target gut-check

Search any Bluesky handle or DID to see which of your mutual followers are currently blocking that account. It provides instant context before you block, follow, or reply, allowing you to leverage the collective moderation wisdom of your trusted network.

2. moot block leaderboard

Beyond individual lookups, the client can analyze your entire mutual graph to calculate which accounts hold the highest block counts across your moots, ranking network-wide block consensus in real-time.

pure browser OAuth (@atproto/oauth-client-browser)

Nobody should have to hand over app passwords or account credentials to third-party tools. Using ATProto’s official browser OAuth flow with public client metadata, authentication happens directly against your own PDS (Personal Data Server). The session token lives solely in your browser memory and is discarded when you disconnect.

Vite + Cloudflare Pages architecture

The entire project is built with TypeScript and bundled with Vite, deployed as a static application on Cloudflare Pages (wrangler.jsonc). There is no backend server, no intermediary proxy, and no central database storing your social connections.

Client-side architecture of bsky-mutual-blocks illustrating pure browser OAuth, batched block crawling, and the dual analysis pipeline.

key technical takeaways

PDS Federation & DID Resolution: Translating user handles into persistent DIDs (via plc.directory or HTTPS DNS) and querying decentralized repositories requires robust fallback handling for custom domains, federated PDS hosts, and deleted accounts.

Concurrent Batching & Rate Limits: Traversing block records across dozens or hundreds of mutual followers sequentially in the browser would quickly trigger AppView rate limits. Chunking requests into controlled concurrent batches keeps traversal fast while avoiding 429 throttling.

Client-Side Privacy by Default: Because all graph traversal and set comparisons execute locally in the user’s browser, there is zero risk of logging, tracking, or leaking who you search or who your mutuals block.

wrap-up

Building on ATProto highlights what makes open social protocols exciting: open schemas, verifiable user data, and the ability to build lightweight, single-purpose tools that empower users to understand their network dynamics on their own terms.

Check out the live tool at bsky-mutual-blocks.pages.dev, or inspect the open-source codebase on GitHub: schwegler/bsky-mutual-blocks.
2

Big Brother Everything TV

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August 27, 2026

#bb28: m&m dye, house micro-aggressions, and the impending blockbuster chaos

Catching up on Big Brother 28 after a theme CPU glitch: calling out the house micro-aggressions, Angela’s M&M dye art, Drew’s veto… Read more →

so, if you noticed the tumbleweeds rolling through here over the last month and change, no, i didn’t abandon ship—my theme decided to start chewing through cpu cycles like it had a personal vendetta against my server. but we are back online just in time for the absolute circus currently unfolding inside the Big Brother 28 house.

when i last posted on july 17th, we were in the golden era of absurdity: eggela had officially hatched, the tool shed was consolidating power with the smug certainty of people who think day 10 alliances last until finale night, and we were all just trying to figure out how many tools could fit in one metaphorical shed before the roof collapsed. fast forward six weeks, and the vibes in the house have shifted from goofy summer camp chaos to messy, uncomfortable, and deeply fractured warfare.

angela’s m&m dye art and the lingering tool shed hangover

first, we have to talk about the sheer unhinged brilliance of angela painting with water mixed with m&m dye using what appeared to be a makeup brush. total, unadulterated icon behavior. say what you want about her game, but the chaotic diy innovation is why we watch feeds. meanwhile, the lingering smugness from the early vet alliance—especially dee and devens acting like they held a monopoly on common sense—has steadily soured into pure paranoia. dee gets so bored in that house that i genuinely think she’s going to figure out a way to blindside herself before jury even hits. whoever wins the next hoh needs to be pissed enough at her to quote janelle verbatim.

Barrett was at a cross-roads this week.

the subtle micro-aggressions and uncomfortable house dynamics

as entertaining as the gameplay pivots can be, we also need to call out the darker undertones that have crept into the house dynamics over the past few weeks. it’s become exhausting watching the subtle micro-aggressions, coded dismissiveness, and casual othering that keep cropping up on the feeds. whenever someone outside the dominant clique tries to assert themselves or play the game, they’re met with immediate tone policing, exaggerated claims of feeling “threatened” or “uncomfortable,” and double standards that never apply to the majority alliance.

it’s that classic Big Brother social pathology where isolating someone socially gets justified as “pure game,” while the actual rhetoric used in private conversations crosses the line into micro-invalidations and passive-aggressive hostility. the lack of self-awareness from players who preach good vibes while actively marginalizing others is infuriating to watch on the live feeds. recognizing implicit bias and checking your own behavior shouldn’t stop at the front door of the studio lot.

drew blowing up the house, thog’s sudden galaxy brain, and the bbbb nightmare

on the game front, drew went and detonated everything at the veto ceremony, leaving us with a blockbuster nomination lineup that has everyone losing their minds. the fact that drew got distracted (classic) and ended up on the block next to mal and taylor is peak bb28. and watching mallory try to convince drew to throw the block buster was almost impressive in how overtly cruel it was—like, wouldn’t him throwing his own game prove he actually wants you to stay?? mal is stressing out on wednesday over thoughts meant for friday, spiraling into total green dinosaur screaming territory.

Dee stands behind Barrett menacingly in the BB28 pantry.

and then there’s thog (haley). i spent the first month convinced she could truly do no right in my eyes, but suddenly she’s out here exhibiting actual tactical perception? her read on barrett’s pitch—noticing that if they only approach her as the swing for one specific scenario, they already have the others locked down—was legitimately sharp. not thog having the best read in the room?!

gameplay philosophy: talk to people, clean the damn kitchen

as we head into the live eviction, the bbbb scenarios are pure chaos. if mal wins, fap has to publicly pick “not drew,” firming up the house lines. if taylor wins, fap picks mal, drew walks, and sides lock in. if drew wins, we get a messy vote where mal goes and yash is forced to pivot again (which he will). usually i root for the specific outcome that causes maximum drama, but this week every single path leads to a different brand of mess.

my only real gripes right now? first, production giving us zero hints about the incoming twist in the promo email (terrified of what nonsense they’re about to drop on us). second, everyone spending all day hyperventilating about being lied to in a game built entirely around lying—stop agonizing and go talk to people! and finally, the state of that house. people are doing dirty stuff on food prep surfaces again. forget physical comps; the next blockbuster should literally just be a timed dishwashing challenge.
2

schwegler

·

July 1, 2026

my month in hell

note: this was written and published on my old blog, originally on 7/7/2023 I never have and never will be big on… Read more →

note: this was written and published on my old blog, originally on 7/7/2023

I never have and never will be big on social media. I don’t really have that look, that joke hit rate, or that charisma. But I finally found a comfy little section to live in. Until it was burned down. For the second time.

On January 25th, I thought I had met the man of my dreams–on Tumblr of all places. From that day until May 31st, we talked each and every day. We said we didn’t have time for an LTR thing right now, but I just ignored it and let some feelings develop. We had a romantic weekend in March and I thought it went well. Two months later, I was basically ghosted.

So, feeling like an unfuckable monster, I moped around the net for a bit. Then, I get hit up by a former coworker and all around great guy, James, to see if I’d like a Blue Sky invite. I knew the service, sure. Any coworker of mine over the years knows I have an illogical love for Pyra Labs. From Blogger to Odeo, on down. So, I snatched it up.

June 1st, I hit the BlueSky app.

I started hearing from parts of the app about “What’s Hot Classic” and something called a “Hellthread.” I was intrigued.

Neat!

So, I dip into the Hellthread feed for a couple days. Liking some skeets (posts, for future reference) here and there. Then I see a Legal Aid post chain, where you show some skin to try and boost asks for people in need. This particular section of the chain was a cuddly edition. And I actually had a pic I didn’t hate that looked cuddly I had sent to a Tumblr boy a few months earlier.

I copy and paste the info, attach the photo and… That was my entry into Hellthread. Instantly, my notifications broke. The app that barely functions on Android, became nigh unusable.

The smidge of positive feedback I got went a long way and encouraged me to stick around. I interacted a bit and then moved the thread. But it kept drawing me back. A chaotic energy. But one that was almost all an unabashed hype machine.

A few people kept getting into spats. But that’s just kinda group dynamics for you.

What solidified things for me was when a person in the thread posted a lewd photo of themselves and a creepy dude just would not let up. A user named Kana swoops in and starts going on about this creepy guy’s shittable beard. And then more users join in. Until the creep fucking retreats. Like magic.

Listen. I’m the kind of person who sobs at genuine acts of kindness. I’m a movie if someone is just really fucking nice? I’m sobbing. Read into that what you want.

But, in this moment of utter chaos with people telling this man how shittable his beard was, I choked up in the same way.

Personalities start to arise around the thread the more I get used to people and their little avatars. Any distinct personality type you could make fun of a millennial for having is there. And in the best way possible.

There are some awesome people who stand out to me. A couple of globetrotters. A UK contingent that’s close to my heart. One of the coolest counselors I’ve ever met. A badass stoner on a stoop. A bee, a blossom, a Jay. And a guy who I think is so cool it’s hard to envision why he’s always my most interacted-with account.

Jokes were made. Fights were had. But mostly, we vibed and boosted each other up while doing dumb spur-of-the-moment photo challenges and creating deep lore-based inside jokes.

The first fight I witnessed was when someone commented too thirstily on an ace person’s post. Fair.

The second fight, ended with the author of the original post Hellthread all lived under rage-deleting it in a hope it would kill the thread after her friend came out of nowhere to defend an app dev from someone asking him to post dick in a half-joking manner. In reality, it was just extending an existing beef from a week prior. But with the added visibility, more people dog piled and ignored that first part. Ending with the great deletion–when the author of the first post in Hellthread deleted it.

The great deletion did shit-all, by the way. Ends up there is only one surefire way to kill the thread: unless it. Though, I have a feeling in hindsight the lead dev, Paul, really wanted this to actually kill it.

Further spats happened, and depending who you are you view them as big or small. People have spats, I grew up in a large southern family–I could take it. I respect those who left or blocked and their reasoning. But, I had the most drama-prone mother on the planet.

Paul, the lead dev on BlueSky, started his latest heel turn around this time. He’s truly a shithead too flippant to be the public face of anything. Banning suicidal ideation posts. Possibly preventing people from getting the help they’re shouting for. (I was once one of those people, too).

But, each time there was a spat or infiltration by a shittable beard, the thread took a hard swing back toward light, positivity, and titties. I remember waking up after a shittable beard incredibly motivated to get some peep’s mutual aid goals met. Sometimes, the best way to fight adversity in your life is to say “fuck it!” and do something positive.

July 5th – Un-dependence Day

I woke up around 7AM on July 5th. I drink some water, and start to get ready for the–nope.

Nope, about one pill in I go “Oh no” in the way Maya Rudolph did in Bridesmaids. I head downstairs. My housemate/former step-dad is in the bathroom showering for work.

Oh God. Oh no. Oh God.

The longest 10 minutes of my life passed.

And then the flood gates open. And they would not close until roughly 7pm when I managed to keep down a phenergan. In my fevered-state, I would check in on Hellthread between bouts in the bathroom.

Not too much going on. I did miss a few thirst traps that I would have loved to boost in real time but instead had to creepily comment something like “Ugh, so hot…” 2 hours late while my head is resting on my toilet seat.

Once the anti-nausea meds hit, I’m out for 13 hours.

8AM, July 6th

I open my phone. After checking my email and messages, I opened Bluesky to find that all my notifications stopped 10 hours prior.

The next thing I see is Paul joking about nuking the Hellthread. Comparing it to a global leader saying, “I thought that compound was military but it was civilian,” or some shit. Again, play with the kids or lead. Don’t try both, you fucking asshole.

A lot of people are ragging on Paul a bit. But, with the suicide stuff, I kinda just listened to him when he told me who he was the first time. Tech bros will always tech bro eventually.

The best feature of the app (OK, maybe right under portable ID) was tossed out with little warning. And the thread is still there; it’s just laggy, delayed, and in a spot on the Android app that never works well*. For all intents and purposes, Hellthread 2 is dead.

(Oh, yeah, this wasn’t even the first Hellthread death.)

I go to the Hellthread feed on Bluesky. Even though it is a little dead. Most of us haven’t figured out how to get there yet. We were used to using our notifications as a glorified chat room. Not the intended use of the app, but I would like to point this out: it was blessed.

The Hellthread was given a special exemption. And as such, we had the expectation that this exemption would remain until at least some debate and warning happened.

Once again, play with the kids too much and we’ll actually believe the lie that you care about our opinions.

The way it was “killed” was by simply unblessing it and letting the default limit of 6 replies set in and have people only get those from directly downstream and not all-over.

— — —

I had a lot of followers on Tumblr back in the day and even found out a good chunk of people at UGA knew of me from my giant parties and would follow me there. But the interaction was minimal.

I didn’t really get much from it except for the time a follower made me the ringtone snippet of “Fuck the Pain Away” as used on 30 Rock. Although, I will admit, that was amazing.

With Hellthread (Bluesky, yeah, but mainly Hellthread) I was on a social platform and didn’t really care about follower count. It was all about building something, vibing, and having some community time.

Oddly, that actually translated to the fastest gain in followers I’ve ever experienced on a platform. I guess authenticity sells or something, IDK. That and I would periodically post some leads for the Brazilian Supercluster (Eu amo todos vocês!).

I’m sure you’re all doing wanking motions in the air now at my emotional waxing about a thread full of jokes, Mutual Aid, boobs, and–occasionally–an avalanche of dicks. But, it was an important experience for me.

So, some personal stuff about me. I’ve been through some shit. Not as bad as some, don’t get me wrong. But I ended up in a place where I kinda hate myself? Not just physically. I mean, like, all of me? It’s not all the time. But it’s also led to me basically not having any trust in anyone. Each time I think I’m building back, like with the Tumblr guy, I get stuck back down.

Don’t pity me; I don’t. It’s just an ongoing work. At least my Cognitive Behavioral Therapy from back in the day gave me the tools to not go off the deep end nearly as much. And I’m grateful for that.

I just kinda forgot what friends–even the semi-parasocial acquaintance type–could feel like. And it felt kinda good. If I were me from 2011, I’d be trying to organize a massive feast of some sort to commemorate things. And I survived Hellthread 2.0 bonfire.

I’ll post a thing and people seem to at least cursorily care and interact. Little hits of dopamine in a world obsessed with violence.

And I’m just on the outskirts, by the way. I’m not in whatever central grouping there is. I’m not in whatever clique you might think from the outside or even after reading this article. I’ve spoken one-on-one outside of HT with exactly two people from HT. I was just a parasocial acquaintance and I could still feel the love and the vibes.

I even got my own couple of reply guys during a few dick avalanches (to toot my own horn). And my pics aren’t even that creative. The dick is just pretty. Not big, just pretty.

And that’s another thing: sharing yourself. The intimate bits you hate? I do that here on Tumblr, but somehow it hits differently when the popular Twitter Gay who ignored you on that platform for YEARS likes a dick pic?

Honestly, though? The thirst is nothing.

When I was a teen, I was in the audience for the one-act competition. The school was having the world’s longest blackout, and I leaned forward and whispered to my castmates, “I love this play; it’s called Black Beauty.” What a dumb fucking joke. But everyone cracked up. That was the craic. And that’s the energy you get in Hellthread. We WILL laugh at your dumb joke for FAR TOO LONG.

Rest in Peace, Hellthread 2.0

*Swiping feeds on Android will open the post under your finger from the previous page about 5/10 times. And then the app is so laggy in general it takes forever to catch up.
Everything

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June 12, 2025

despite all his rage,he’s still just a cat in a cage

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— James Hughes (@dystopian-fashion.bsky.social) 2025-06-12T05:31:37.679Z