Hello, is this the nice peaceful charming tribe?

The trouble with humans isn't changed by going onto a different social network. Unfortunately.

Whose turn is it to be set on fire today?

One of my favourite episodes of the comedy series Modern Family is one where Claire Dunphy (one of the mother-wives in the group) goes back to her college, and is confronted with her past, in front of her husband Phil:

Claire: It's just- It's a little bit embarrassing. The guy that I dated right before you is here, so...
Phil: Oh. Well, that's nothing to be embarrassed about. We all have exes. So the guy you dumped right before you met me is here. No big deal.
Claire: [high-pitched] Well... He might've dumped me.
Phil: I thought you said you'd never been dumped.
Claire: [high-pitched] Well... Maybe one time.
Phil: So he dumped you, you healed completely, and then you met me.
Claire: [high-pitched] Well...

That high-pitched “Wellllll..” is the sort of sound you can imagine lots of people making in lots of dramatic setups. Is this hotel you’re taking the family to in the depths of winter where you’ll finally write your book safe? Wellll… Is that unknown planet to which your spaceship has been diverted by a peculiar radio signal from an odd alien ship safe? Welll…

Anyway, to bring things closer to the general topic here, is burgeoning social network Bluesky going to be a place where the rampaging hordes who made Twitter unbearable for some are finally left behind, and everything will be sweetness and light, enabled by starter packs and federation and especially blocklists (which no longer work on X)?

Wellll….

This week Bluesky basically lost its collective mind over the arrival of Jesse Singal, an American journalist. He’s basically a New York Democrat, but the fly in the ointment for Bluesky’s denizens is that he has written extensively on transgender issues, particularly about the science involved, and hasn’t always been supportive of what Democrats—or the left—might think is the consensus. From my point of view (I know him and subscribe to his Substack) he’s simply rigorous, and not ideological.

My point though isn’t about his journalism, it’s about the reaction. When he created an account there last Friday, people went, simply, bonkers.

Really? Hammers? Doorknobs? But it got wilder and wilder (which Singal documented on his X account in a laconic yet amazed fashion). People added him to blocklists, so that they wouldn’t have to see his posts. Job done, you would have thought. But no: that wasn’t enough. They created blocklists of people who followed him.

A list showing the most-blocked people on Bluesky earlier this week: amazing that the top two are both, ostensibly, Democrats.

Next step: harass the head of moderation at Bluesky, Aaron Rodericks, demanding he remove Singal. What for? Existing, dammit! OK, if not existing, then being a paedophile! (This is a completely made up accusation.) OK then, an FTC class action that will be taken to the Supreme Court! (I hope you can tell this is made up.) OK, just murder (there was some discussion about whether he should be buried in a pine or a spruce coffin.

Next tactic: accuse Rodericks of being a paedophile. Not really sure they had thought this through. Which meant it was back to discussing methods of murder. Shooting? Beating? (None of this was moderated, of course.)

Next, probably related: an exploit which enabled a suitably competent hacker to attack a BlueSky account to prevent its posts loading.

Latest: an open letter on “the Singal situation” and his “repeated deliberate violations of Bluesky Community Guidelines.” (Spoiler: he hasn’t violated them.) At the time of writing, it has nearly 14,000 signatures demanding his removal for three alleged infractions, only two of which are claimed to have happened on Bluesky, and which when you follow the provided links, simply don’t support the claim made. Sure, that’s only a quarter of the number who had blocked him, but for nearly 15,000 people to be incapable of parsing some text and thinking “uhh, what?” is perhaps concerning.

Especially when one of them is.. Lizzo? Who doesn’t even know who he is, but is sure she agrees:

Lizzo, on Bluesky, saying she has signed an open letter with no idea who it’s about

So any suggestion that Bluesky is the kinder, gentler social network can be quietly put to bed.

But there’s a more interesting question. Why is Singal the target? After all, he’s a Democrat, and Bluesky is, essentially, being used as a refuge by many left-leaning Americans: the exodus from Twitter after the US election was matched by the influx to Bluesky, whose numbers rocketed.

So why are they attacking him (and Wu, a trans woman who has expressed concern about the effect on voters of the Democrats’ stance on transgender issues)?

Colin Wright, who runs the Reality’s Last Stand site, summed this up very neatly in a post on X:

The frothing hatred for jessesingal by Bluesky users might appear odd given that he's a left-wing moderate. I'm more right-wing than Jesse and talk about many of the same issues. So why is he treated so much worse than me by this group?

It's because ideological boundaries are often policed more fervently against those closer than those further away. Heretics, because they are seen as internal threats to a group's unity, are frequently treated with much more venom than apostates or infidels.

It's also because those who are ideologically closer to them are usually more easily manipulated due to fear of social exile. It's the dynamic of a struggle session.

Fortunately, Jesse financially supports himself on Substack with articles and podcasts. But because they can't pressure an employer to get him fired and ruin him financially, they're stuck in a perpetual and increasingly unhinged outrage loop about him.

This is a great insight. Tribalism is never far from the surface in any social network. And for a tribe, the most important thing is keeping the tribe together, because if you lose the cohesion, you lose everything. The people on the fringes, who are the ones beginning to edge away, must either be drawn back into the group or—if they refuse to mend their ways—be evicted. If the tribe’s cohesion depends on strong shared beliefs, then the eviction must be done in the most dramatic fashion.

There’s a fantastic line in the ITV drama “Everyone Else Burns”, which is set in a small and very strict religious sect in Britain’s Midlands. In S1E1 the leader of the Church is explaining to the congregation why a family they used to know has been excommunicated:

“I have some rather grave news to conclude with. The Jay family are no longer Ordinands of God. They’ve been excluded. I can’t go in to what they did. But… a reminder that drug dealing is a mortal sin.” [Pause, while you think blimey, drugs eh, huh.]

“And of course,” the leader continues, “we do consider coffee a drug. There is only one way now for us to extend our love for them, and that is to shun them completely.”

One woman in the audience whispers, in an aside to her neighbour, “They knew what they were doing when they opened that café.”

Shun them completely! It’s the only language they understand, and it’s the only way to keep the tribe together. Apostates can’t be tolerated; they have to be reviled and cast out. It doesn’t greatly matter what they’ve done; what’s important is they’re out. Those who are closest to the border of belief and disbelief are the ones most liable to infect the others with their disbelief; it is the doubters who carry the seeds of the destruction of the group.

Once you start to recognise the pattern, you’ll see it everywhere: in politics, among sports fans, religious groups, specialisms, whatever niche you care to examine. The dissenters bring on a desire in the group to gather some kindling and tie the troublesome one to a pole in the middle of the town square. (Pine or spruce, doesn’t matter.) Or, failing that, write a really long open letter.

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