I go to create an account on Bluesky, as desperate tech journalists have been hammering my newsfeed every day for weeks about how it’s the next coming of Christ or something, and I want to see if they’re right.
The first thing it asks is to select my hosting provider. I have no idea what that means. The default is “Bluesky Social”. I think that’s where I currently am though? For any other option I have to enter a server address. The only help directs me to a page about self-hosting a “Personal Data Server that is capable of federating with the wider ATProto network”, whatever the fuck that means. Well, I’m sure it’s not important. Default it is.
The rest of the signup is simple enough. At the last step I’m asked to select a few of my interests from a small list. They’ll use this to “tailor my experience”, apparently. I select “tech”, “video games”, and “science”. That seems like a good start.
I complete the signup process, and get directed to my home feed.
Literally the first post I see is about US politics.
There is also a photo of a plant someone took, a post about The Beatles, more US politics, a post about soccer, something about the Israel/Gaza conflict, and yet more US politics. I do eventually run into an account that crossposts space photos found on Reddit, but I’m not sure if that’s related to my “science” interest or just a coincidence.
Since I’m beginning to suspect my interests haven’t been properly configured, I go the to the settings to check, but I cannot find any setting that seems to relate to this. I have no idea what that question during signup is supposed to have done, but it’s not very effective.
While futilely looking for these ghost settings, I stumble upon something called feeds. Apparently, you can subscribe to feeds, which seem to be curated collections of posts, hashtags, and/or users surrounding a certain topic. I look into creating a custom feed for my interests, as the “tailored experience” so far is rather lacking.
Unfortunately though, it seems that contrary to what I was expecting, a feed is not something that can easily be created through the website. In a tiny explanatory message, it tells me that feeds are “custom algorithms” which it claims are created by users with “a little coding expertise”, before redirecting me to GitHub where it then starts talking about setting up my own web- and database servers and a TypeScript development environment. Exactly what I was hoping for.
Since creating your own feed is clearly not the way to go if one is expecting a smooth user experience, I guess I’ll look into some of the feeds that other users have created. Seeing as how anime wasn’t in the initial list of interests to choose from, I’m curious about how this topic is represented here. I type “anime” into the feed search and select the most popular feed.
The first post in the feed is indeed about anime.
In the second post, I am introduced to a 350-pound pansexual Caribbean “bear” who, among various other interests I shall not repeat here, enjoys anime. Great.
Scrolling further down, I find some cosplay, a lot of poorly done fanart, a few bits of somewhat good fanart, a lengthy thread of someone passionately defending the non-consensual use of BDSM on 14-year-old highschool girls as “symbolic”, some anime gifs, a pie someone baked (looked quite good), furry porn, actual porn, merch people have bought, gunpla, and of course, some US politics. In other words, a typical slice of anime culture.
I trawl through the various accounts that show up in this feed, hoping that some of them might be worth following directly. But they’re mostly just randos talking about anime. On Twitter, I almost exclusively follow content creators: anime artists, manga illustrators, cosplayers, streamers, and studio accounts. But barely any of them seem to have made the move to Bluesky yet, and the ones that have are not exactly easy to find through its discovery tools, with their occasional posts drowning in an ocean of trash.
I’m not sure what to do next, as every seemingly relevant feed or hashtag is a barren wasteland of either just completely offtopic posts, or nobody accounts with 3 followers who occasionally might say something about an anime. I wonder if I’m simply using Bluesky incorrectly, and I probably am, but from reading a few Reddit threads I know I’m not the only one having trouble configuring a decent feed that actually aligns with my interests. I’m assuming it is possible, but it’s not a very intuitive process.
Finally, less than an hour after signing up, and having so far only browsed around a bit and not interacted with anyone or anything, I receive a notification. An account that follows 3k other accounts and has started posting AI-generated images 2 hours ago is now also following me.
I am thrilled about what else Bluesky has in store for me.