What will Football Bluesky look like after the Great Xodus?

The last couple of weeks have finally seen a mass decampment from Football Twitter to Football Bluesky, but can we maintain our civility once the contentious stuff starts again?

For many years, the thing that prevented me from giving up smoking was the fear of giving up smoking itself. What would the physical effects on me be like? How would I get on without this… part of me? But then one morning last year I woke up and the very first thing I thought was, “Huh, I don’t want to smoke any more”, and that was that. I’ve not picked up a cigarette since.

I mention this because I've come to feel the same way about Twitter in recent months. It was becoming bad for me, and furthermore I was one of the lucky ones. As a middle-aged white bloke with heavy set glasses and grey hair who largely talks about football that not many people care about, I’ve never really been on most people’s radars as a target for much hassle. My replies were usually a pleasure, all a long way from the time I received 36 hours’ worth of dog-piling and abusive DMs after describing Cristiano Ronaldo as an “aging Instagram star” in a piece that I wrote for F365.

But the poison was increasingly getting everywhere. I had, in the past and for the good of my own mental health, been extremely liberal with the old muted words. I didn’t want to know anything about Donald Bleedin’ Trump, so I blocked his name and about 95% of the Tweets about him just stopped. But it wasn’t all about him by 2024, was it? The conflagration of Twitter by its new idiot owner had turned the place into a cesspit and by the summer, no matter how clean you tried to keep your own little corner of it, the effluence was spreading into your timeline whether you liked it or not.

I know what it’s like to be an addict, and Twitter increasingly felt like the worst of the guilt that I got through those latter years of smoking cigarettes. I’d had an account on Bluesky for quite a long time, back when it was invitation only, but my posting there had been sporadic, while the Threads algorithm gave me a “For You” timeline full of my biggest anxieties, and barely anyone I knew used it anyway. That situation has changed slightly, and I’ve since made the decision to use Threads slightly differently.

But then one morning, I woke up and just thought to myself, “Huh, I don’t want to be on Twitter any more”. I stuck up a pinned Tweet saying that I would largely be on the other place from then on. I’ve barely posted there since, though I’m not deleting the account because I don’t want anyone taking over the username.

And the experience has been… very nice, so far. Being included on a handful of ‘football journalist’ starter packs has seen me gain a bit of a following there, although because of the way in which this has come about I am very aware that it’s a different audience to before. I even had a ‘skeet’ (don’t hate the player, hate the game) do #numbers, which was also an unusual experience because the replies and quotes were all kinda nice rather than accusing me of being a dog rapist or whatever, as would have undoubtedly been the case on the other place.

The last couple of weeks or so have felt like watching a social media app come of age again, as familiar names have gravitated from A to B. But what will Football Bluesky look like, and can it retain the enjoyable madness of Football Twitter without the increasing amount of bullshit that has started to come with it in recent years?

At the moment, it’s certainly different. Few big clubs or organisations have joined up to any significant extent, and even if some of Twitter’s Biggest Twats do join the medium, it’s gratifyingly easy to block them and move on. These two factors alone signify a change in pace and tone, though there has been much debate on there about ‘echo chambers’ recently after a couple of ‘Big Beast’ lobby journalists got all het up because so many of us insta-block people we don’t want spreading that effluence again.

Well… that’s my policy too. It’s just a simple fact that I have to protect my mental health, just as we all should, and as anybody who's been dog-piled on the other place knows fully well, experiencing that is pretty awful, even for somebody who is mercifully spared such concepts as reply guys or abusive DMs that often.

It turned out that the first full weekend of Post Xodus Twitter was a quiet one for Football Bluesky. The international interregnum saw to that. There were derby matches in the WSL and there was even a Merseyside derby decided by a penalty given for a foul outside the area, while there was also some lower division and non-league football. But without the soap opera of the Premier League, even England playing a couple of games felt like a bit of a damp squib because they played reasonably competently in both and won them.

The first true stress test for Football Bluesky will come this weekend, with a full round of Premier League matches. On Saturday, Manchester City vs Spurs seems like the spiciest fixture of the day, while the following day Ruben Amorim makes his managerial debut for Manchester United in the 4.30 kick-off at Ipswich. It’s not a particularly contentious round of fixtures this weekend, but the current combustibility of the top half of the Premier League now seems primes to make someone lose their rag every weekend.

Because it is absolutely the case that everybody has been on their best behaviour on Bluesky over the last couple of weeks. But what will happen, should a contentious decision be given in, say, the match between Arsenal and Nottingham Forest on Saturday afternoon? To what extent is all that stuff going to find its way to the new place?

The answer to that final question is that it’s probably down to us. It feels as though a lesson has finally been learned about not quoting other people to snark at them, and this is probably a good thing. I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been guilty of this in the past, but I’ve come to appreciate that, while it may provide me personally with the world’s shortest dopamine hit, this may not be the case for anybody who sees it.

Essentially, I’m through with all that rage. There’s a lot to be angry about at the moment, to be sure, but I simply don’t feel that funnelling it through social media adds to the sum total of happiness in the world. Furthermore, it doesn’t feel as though it’s been doing me any good, and I do still hold onto the belief that the world may be a minutely better place for me being part of it. I have kids who depend on me, and other people who love me. I want to look after myself better, and that includes my stress levels.

So, just like the cigarettes, I’ve quit the thing that was bad for me and I feel all the better for it. With a new year and new vistas on the horizon, it feels like the right point in my life to sever that cord. And as for whether Football Bluesky can walk the tightrope between enjoyable snark and eccentricity without overstepping, well… that would be down to those of us using it, wouldn't it? Let’s try and keep that edge and eccentricity without all the hate.

Image by MrJayW from Pixabay