Published stuff

As a writer, it’s great when your instincts turn out to be sound. I’d written a Bluesky piece for the issue of Stuff currently going to print, but then saw the massive wave of new users and so got it online ASAP. And I’m thrilled to report that The best Bluesky tips 2024: replace Twitter and make social media fun again has done really well, because it’s good for the site but, more importantly, helps more people get started with Bluesky. Numbers-wise, it’s even creeping towards my surprise breakout column about why I’m buying my first CD player in 20 years.

Speaking of columns, this week I wrote the following: This games store is saving 100 retro games from oblivion. The rest of the gaming world needs to step up too. Games preservation is close to my heart, and so it’s always good to see commercial entities tackle this problem, rather than leaving it to grey-area emulation. But there are so few of them. The games industry needs to do more and care about its own history.

Finally, over at TapSmart, I wrote about 12 great iPhone Lock Screen widgets and added Edge to my classics series.

Other stuff

The latest Bluesky wave has got people talking. Often in ways that to me make little sense. Over on Threads, people seem genuinely annoyed that Bluesky is the current social media darling. There’s lots of hand-wringing from the people in charge, who don’t seem to realise that Threads cloning the best Bluesky features won’t matter if Meta continues being Meta, making decisions that are user-hostile.

For me, the key thing about Bluesky (like Mastodon) is that it defaults to the content you want to see. Threads adding custom feeds is meaningless if it always shows you inane engagement bait in ‘For You’ every time you open the app. And the company continuing to conflate – or not – Threads and Instagram depending on whether – or not – it’s in Meta’s best interests is getting old. (‘Use a totally different social network for DMs’ is wild from a user-experience standpoint.)

But the big argument about Bluesky comes from people still posting on X. They claim we need to save the town square. We’re told Bluesky will become a left-wing bubble. Just no. X’s algorithm was aggressively pushing right-wing content into my feed when I quit the site in 2023, so I can only imagine how bad it is now. It is no longer a level playing field. And right-wing voices are not blocked from Bluesky – it’s just that people will block them if they start being dicks.

Moreover, X is not and was never a town square. It was more like a pub. And you don’t stay and fight for a pub you like if a new landlord scraps the barred list, starts yelling about how much he hates “the libs”, makes friends with a bunch of far-right nutters, and ensures your entire time there will be spent dealing with arseholes yelling shit your way. What you do is this: you find another pub. In all, I get the impression certain people are mostly fuming because we won’t play their game anymore. Tough.

Speaking of Bluesky (again – last time, I promise), I asked over there the following: Do writers have that thing when they read themselves from 10 or 20 years ago and it’s like reading someone else entirely? Some old columns on this blog and elsewhere still sound like me to some degree, but many feel weirdly alien. It’s odd. And this isn’t about quality. In fact, sometimes I read an old column and think it’s really clever, which helpfully sends me into a spiral of “oh my god, I’m shit” as my deadline roars towards me with all of the subtlety of a rhinoceros wearing a jetpack.

Still, I suppose this is a good thing. I’d rather evolve than always be the same. And I’m heading towards 25 years of being paid to smash out words for various folks, and so I must be doing something right.