LeBron is taking a break from social media. Should you? Are you ready to stop being performatively fascinating and get authentically dull? And is Bluesky the XFL of Twitter — or a refreshingly Musk-free community worth joining? Plus: "Re-Potting with Pablo," making lentil, fighting in Temecula, road rage, Mastodon, two ejaculating giraffes, a charging wildebeest and the actually hungry hippo (with suspenders and a pocket watch). Relevant reading: How Bluesky, Alternative to X and Facebook, Is Handling Explosive Growth (Mike Isaac) The Age of Social Media Is Ending (Ian Bogost) The Bluesky Bubble (Ian Bogost) "With so much hate and negativity in the world today..." (Rich Kleiman) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How does road rage reflect societal issues?
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
The one that's ejaculating two giraffes is the only Trump dance that there is. That's right.
Certainly there is a political element to this, but Pablo, you're speaking to the other thing that has made that app fairly and significantly less user-friendly and unpleasant. And I think it's not political at all, which is the engagement farming, which is that people are now using it to make money in the lowest... It is all either rage bait, engagement bait, misinformation.
It's the lowest common denominator. And one thing that has been nice is when I opened the algorithm on Blue Sky, the viral posts have just been funny. It's been like good jokes. It reminds me of Twitter back in the old days.
Why we fell in love with this terrible, addictive platform that we all hated initially also in the first place.
And not it's not they're not political jokes. They're just like weird, goofy observations, mundane things. They're cleverly written. And that's what I want out of social media. I just want to be entertained. I also I will say this, though, I have really and I hope it lasts and I hope that the moderation tools keep working.
I have really missed hearing from people who actually watch and listen and read what we do because I have not been able to do that now for the last three years or whatever ever since Elon Musk took over, a little bit before that, to be honest. And it really has been quite gratifying. And again, maybe I'm a loser for wanting to hear from folks and wanting to talk back to them. But I missed it.
I missed that part of social media. And it is fun, however short-lived it'll be.
I had a thing happen to me in New York that sort of illustrates some of what it is that you're talking about, because I'm walking through the streets of New York and I meet somebody who is clearly a fan of what we do. And he filed what were his complaints with the present evolution of our show to me, three or four of them.
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