Ok, so I’m done with Twitter/X.

I haven’t canceled my account, but I’m going to pay more attention to Bluesky for the time being. It seems slightly saner. You can find me here: @lstr.bsky.social

The tipping point, for me, is the Drone Flap of 2024. There has been a rash of drone sightings in northern New Jersey in an area that happens to be around some of the most active airports in the country. Every single photo of a drone I’ve seen thus far is undeniably an aircraft, either a commercial jet, a private/corporate jet, or a helicopter. That is, except for the ones that are stars or timelapse photos of satellites.

The images, to a one, are so compressed and artifact-y that they put a lie to the recent canard of “Why aren’t there photos of UFOs/Bigfoot/Nessie if everyone has a camera?” The fact is that everyone has a camera in their pocket, but many smartphone cameras aren’t very good (or scratched from being in your pocket), and they lose a lot of detail when uploaded to sites like Twitter.

I’d post some examples, but I’m frankly tired of looking at Twitter.

Over the last 24 hours my feed became full of “drone” photos, followed by generated photos, threads full of the “best of” drone photos, hysterical reporting on how stymied local officials are, breathless tales of Chinese and Russian drone supremacy and all interlaced by the standard Twitter clickbait and deceptive imagery that I’ve come to accept over time. Well, no more…

…alright, I’ll post one, because this amused me:

https://x.com/Kobe_for_3/status/1866194884945719649

It is a helicopter. In fact, it was a NJ State Police helicopter that was dispatched to investigate reports of drones, which then created reports of a drone mothership.

I think what we are seeing is, in many ways, a case of mass hysteria, but that is such a loaded term that it is tough to use it effectively—at least by amateurs such as myself. But it really feels that way.

It is starting to spread, however, and my local FB community page is beginning to fill with nonsense about drones in Jenkintown.

But I digress. My point is that Twitter is no longer full of the quirky little posters that amused and delighted me. As far as I’m concerned, it is mostly engagement farmers, people posting provocative nonsense designed to “trigger” your outrage in one way or another. Some posters will post obvious fakes to get you to call them out on it. Others will create long threads of garbage to string you along–the Twitter version of a listicle. If it isn’t the drone flap, it is constant posts about alleged preppie assassin Luigi Mongione, or Diddy, or Epstein, or god knows what.

Anyway, I’m going to spend more time on Bluesky. It is what Twitter was a while back, long before even the hip posters showed up.