Bluesky Social: A Natural History of its Cambrian Explosion

The "social media protocol that could" returns with a vengeance

Regular readers of this newsletter will remember some mild to moderately amusing content related to the birth of Bluesky Social. The origin was based off of Twitter, and had Jack Dorsey behind it— a decentralized, AT protocol, borne from the ashes of social media stalwart Twitter, that started in the way of all good social media platforms before they got ruined. It started as an invite-only platform to keep the predators at bay.

Owen is hanging out at Sugimoto’s version of the Natural History Museum.

The early users, of which I was one along with

Carlene MacMillan, MD

(we were the second and third Psychiatrists on there, respectively) we were treated to bizarre, glitchy, impossible to exit threads dubbed “the Hellthread” (a book of poems I wrote got its name there).

Early invites brought in many trans individuals and sex workers, as well as funny journalists like Jake Tapper, politicians like AOC, and individuals of goodwill like my wife, who nabbed @psychiatry.bsky.social as a handle.

This very newsletter covered the story at its inception…with articles like:

and…

And…a few Shakespeare themed posts…

And I really love a good Shakespeare parody…

And there is more, but I will let subscribers use the search function here on Substack.

However, it didn't have the Cambrian explosion of users like the early clubhouse when the invite-only status was removed. It languished behind Meta’s Threads app:

Explosive Growth!

And then the election happened, and porn bots and political commentary overran the old place we used to call Twitter. As Twitter got X-ed out as a useful place for journalists, and threads continue to have the trademark lukewarm soul-sucking para-social vibe of everything Zuckerberg does, a void still needed filling. An influx of nerds, scientists, journalists, niche enthusiasts, software developers, open source enthusiasts, 💩 posters, and now 21 million more decided they wanted to join the federated Bluesky. It's been growing at around 1 million users daily for over a week, with a team of 20 people to keep the wheels on the bus. Before this Cambrian Explosion, what was it like? Weird, for one. George Santos joined the night before he got indicted, for example:

George Santos when he joined us on Bluesky…

I, for one, get to be grimly satisfied that my first account had to be abandoned after my harassment-focused-human allegedly (by me) made the experience untenable. A sample of the kinds of things being claimed: