Social Media Network Report Card (Translation: I’m On Threads Now?)

So, how are the various social media platforms doing? Are they worth your time as a person, as a writer, as seven possums in a trenchcoat? Given that community and audience are both found and earned through these social networks, I figure it’s worth taking a gander at them again as I’ve done a number of times over the last year — in part because the social media landscape has broken into a number of little islands thanks to various tectonic shifts beneath the internet crust and we’re all just trying to find a place to rest our digital heads at night. Also in part because, as a writer, I need to find not just a place to HAWK MY WORDY WARES, which is of dubious value, but rather a place where I can meet writers and readers and agents and publishing folks and bookstore people and in general contribute to a larger, greater, cooler bookish ecosystem.

That said, as always, this is all purely my perspective. It is zero percent useful wisdom and one hundred percent just some bullshit that passed through my head like a cloud of stupid. I am not to be listened to. I’m just some jackass with a blog. Proceed with that situational awareness.

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Threads.

So, to jump to the start, I’m on Threads now.

It’s fine!

That’s more or less my capsule review. It’s fine! It’s fine. It’s fine.

Some general thoughts about it:

a) It’s obviously tied to Instagram and Facebook and therefore is tied to Zuckerberg which is bad and not good. No, it’s not awesome having to pick your social media platform based on which billionaire sociopath upsets you the least? But it is what it is, I guess. Our choices in life do not always amount to great ones, woefully.

b) If you want the place where the celebrities, the brands, the media outlets, are all going, it’s probably there. It’s got a big crowd — a lot of transfers over from Instagram, I guess? Despite the big crowd I don’t think it feels that peppy as yet. I can’t actually tell how many people I’m following (?) but it seems like a good group. That said, I do see a lot more general activity happening on Bluesky. Still, Threads is not precisely quiet, either, and even in the week since I’ve joined it looks to have picked up a bit.

c) There is a “who you follow” feed, which appears to present the posts of your followed accounts in the order they are posted. But it defaults to an algorithmic FYP feed, which shows a random disgorgement of… I mean, I assume it’s whatever the Insane Robot That Governs The Place wants you to see. It definitely seems to prioritize verified accounts over non-verified.

d) There does seem to be a pretty good bookish crowd of writers and readers.

e) The vibe there is… I dunno, is it wrong if I say, Ruby Tuesdays? Applebees? Like, if Twitter is currently your local Nazi Bar, and Bluesky is your local Eclectic Diner, this definitely feels like a popular-but-functional chain restaurant. People are having a nice enough time and it feels pretty reliable. It’s the “Hey, let’s go to Chili’s” variant of social media. Sometimes, you want that, and that’s okay, no shame.

f) The one thing I like about it in theory but not in practice is the granularity of how you can see your engagement — there’s All, Follows, Replies, Mentions, Quotes, Reposts, Verified, Dunks, Trolls, Posts By People Who Don’t Know What They’re Talking About But Probably Mean Well, Devil’s Advocates, Robots, Dog Photos, Replies From Stalkers, and People Who Still Think NFTs Are Cool. Or something like that. Point is, it’s definitely more granular but… I also don’t feel like each tab works great, and I’m really not seeing a lot of actually existing replies, and the overall GUI of those pages feels noisy and hard for me to parse, for some reason. That might just be me, though.

So, it’s fine! I don’t hate it. I don’t yet love it. It exists and I’m using it and have found some value there and in part that value is finding friends who are using it, too. Which is nice. I wasn’t going to join it but… real talk, writing is a lonely gig and sometimes you want to feel like there’s a room you can go into and hear some voices. Further, publishing is in a place where it’s still not sure exactly how to navigate the shattered social media landscape, and as much as I hate to say it, that means it’s (yet again) on writers to actually carve out their spaces and — well, we’re all just trying to either not die in the abyss or, at the very least, find other people dying in the abyss with us so we can commiserate with one another as we sink softly into the pudding of oblivion.

(Also, The Pudding of Oblivion is my next next novel, out in 2026.)

At the very least, Threads is not Twitter.

Which brings us to —

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Twitter.

For a while now, my interaction with Twitter has largely been:

Posting promo. Replying to a few people. Reading DMs. Boosting the signal on stuff that needed (in my mind) boosting. I spent very little time on the site daily. But my new book is finally out on shelves, plus the local school board election is over (we won thank fucking god, the M4L nightmare people are out the door, though not before handing their partner in crime, Superintendent Abe Lucabaugh, a whopping $700k+ retirement package ahhh what the actual fuck), so given that the site is a demented disinformation machine run by a racist emerald mining antisemite fuckface who is now winking at Q-Anon bullshit, I’m all the way out. Account is still there but I’m happy to be not in it. It is a hollow shell.

The bar is a Nazi bar, snout to tail, now.

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Bluesky.

I dunno if we’re still calling it BLOOSKY and SKEETING SKEETS or whatever, but I still really like the platform and it works for me. It’s peppy, chatty, and increasingly engorged with good people. It does seem to have lost some of its weird, feral edge — that edge, I think, dulled by a lot of news-flavored stuff getting posted. On the one hand, I really like that it’s becoming more a place to get informed about stuff — on the other hand, I miss people posting Alf Hog and Gandalf Tits and Bird Photos. There was a powerful chaos energy to the earlier days akin to walking into any Waffle House at 3AM — you just had no idea what was going to be on the menu that night. Now, it’s settling into something that feels a little more predictable, like it’s speed-running the Midseason Twitter era. Again, this isn’t necessarily good or bad in terms of assigning it a value — and I may be experiencing something different from what others are experiencing. I do like it though and it remains my Social Media Network of choice.

(And, currently, also the one where I get the most outright engagement. Even compared to places where I have more followers.)

(Also, I have a few Bluesky codes I’m just noticing — if you want ’em, comment below and I’ll toss one atcha.)

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Instagram.

I continue to like it. I see photos of dogs and birds and food and books and as such, it is vaguely relaxing and a place to stop. Increasingly it’s pivoting to video and I hate that, mostly, though I’ve popped a few reels up there and they’re fun enough, I guess.

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TikTok.

I continue to not be on there or literally see anything that happens there and I’m probably better for it, and you’re probably better not seeing me there, and I think that’s a good decision we’re all making. I do understand that BookTok is currently *checks notes* kind of in control of publishing, whether it realizes it or not, and as such, I guess I should probably be there and be paying attention? At the same time, I can’t control it, and I suspect it would just cause my brain to swell up like an overfed tick and then it would pop and there’d be anxious brain goo everywhere. So, again, I remain here. Without the Tiks or the Toks to keep me warm at night.

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Mastodon.

Listen I don’t hate Mastodon at all but I can only do so much. So it’s currently not on my menu. My mind can only handle so many social media platforms before it shits its brainpants. Sorry!

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Facebook.

If you need to know what your racist aunt or that guy from high school is up to, Facebook is your jam. I dunno. It seems to throttle links now and ennh. I use it as a walled garden to keep up with family and friends, that’s it.

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The Others.

Is Post still a thing? Spoutible? Ello? MySpace? Bramble? Bumblr? Faceyplace? Me-Cave? U-Circle? Hangzone? Lasertag? Are any of these even real? What is happening? I dunno. I’m not on these.

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The Blog.

THE BLOG IS ALL

ALL HAIL THE BLOG

WHEN ALL OTHERS SINK INTO THE MIRE

THE BLOG RISES

THE BLOG REMAINS

THE BLOG IS ALL

Or something.

Reminder, you can subcribe if you’re so inclined.

Anyway, that’s it. Buy my books or I die. Bye!