During our vacation, I noticed an interesting, if predictable, phenomenon while we drove through Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks. Namely, clots of cars in turnouts and on roadsides, with people all staring off into the distance. In some cases, there was indeed a glorious sight to see; we are talking about two beautiful national parks, after all. In other instances, no one had the slightest idea what they were supposed to be looking at.
At one point, we pulled off the road to see why a particular mass of people had congregated and were staring at an empty valley. We were told, “We thought there might be a grizzly bear out there.” I scanned the area several times and didn’t see anything remotely resembling a bear, grizzly, teddy, or otherwise. But there was a crowd of people gazing intently into the distance, so there had to be something to see, right?
Nope. But no one wanted to miss out on the alleged spectacle. I joked with a fellow parkgoer that, as an experiment, I wanted to pull off at some random spot and have Mrs. Brown focus her camera on nothing while I pointed into the distance, to see how many people would join us to stare at a rock or tree branch.
It does not take much to gather a crowd, whether it is the fear of missing out on a momentous occasion or just wanting to be part of a fad and indulging in the latest TikTok trend, such as carpet tacks, or something. The herd mentality can be benign, such as wanting to see a bear in the wild, or stupid, like making an ass of oneself on social media.
It can take darker turns, such as cancel culture and protests, in which people may agree in principle with a cause without knowing all of its ramifications. Or they may just be in need of personal validation, or they have a thing for chaos. In that case, the herd mentality can consist of trying to ruin people’s lives or burning down the local CVS in the name of justice. In such cases, personal accountability and even basic reasoning skills are defenestrated and, as Luke wrote in Acts 16, “Most of the people did not even know why they were there.”
Such was the case recently on Bluesky, the progressive equivalent of X, where a person has a safe space to speak their mind and voice their opinions, so long as their fellow posters are in complete agreement with whatever they say. Tech Crunch notes that last week, a Bluesky user named Jerry Chen posted a joke that had been circulating on X: “(bluesky user bursts into Waffle House) OH SO YOU HATE PANCAKES??”
It was a harmless jape, but also true. People who haunt the pages of Bluesky are of the strain of humanity that finds a reason to be infuriated and offended over anything and everything in the name of Leftist causes. It was a humorous moment of self-reflection that also happened to be spot-on. It prompted the following:
Bluesky CEO Jay Graber quoted this approvingly, adding, “Too real. We’re going to try to fix this. Social media doesn’t have to be this way.” Another user then asked, “have y’all banned Jesse Singal yet or…” to which Graber simply replied, “WAFFLES!” (sic)
The outlet reports that Singal has earned the ire of the Bluesky faithful for his comments on trans issues, so much so that at one point, a Change.org petition to have him booted from the platform garnered over 28,000 signatures. The only person who has been subjected to more Bluesky blocks than Singal is JD Vance. Graber responded, “Harassing the mods into banning someone has never worked. And harassing people in general has never changed their mind.” And she posted a photo of waffles.
The original response from an affronted user was only the first salvo in which many of Bluesky’s faithful and left-leaning members vented their outrage; some of whom threatened to leave, while others opined that the platform had banned pro-Palestine and trans users while allowing Singal’s account to remain intact. Still others could not resist the Left’s word-of-the-century, “Nazi.” There were also commented that marginalized people had built the platform up, and would essentially burn it down by going on to the next thing.
Writing on UnHerd, Katherine Dee comments:
Bluesky has provided a more hostile environment for defences of free speech. The site’s early adopters imagined it as a sanctuary for Left-leaning netizens, especially trans users who fled X after Elon Musk’s takeover in 2022.
Graber has always insisted her aim is a decentralised protocol, not a single moral community. However, reconciling that vision with the reason so many of Bluesky’s users are there in the first place is hard. One side frames moderation as solidarity; the other rejects moral authority. You can’t appeal to progressives, specifically, and have both.
The underlying question is worth asking, despite the sensitivity of Bluesky’s user base. What kind of speech should a social network tolerate, and who should decide? That tension stretches back to the dawn of the virtual community.
Dee rightly observes, "The trouble with 'free speech' is that it demands tolerating statements we find distasteful, without reducing everything we dislike to 'harm.' Online, that distinction collapses."
I have read about conservatives who have ventured onto Bluesky, only to find themselves swiftly subjected to the Almighty Block Hammer, sometimes within minutes. If the users of Bluesky find Singal’s opinions so offensive, they are more than free to ignore him and go about their business.
In part, the kerfuffle can be ascribed to the fact that the Leftists are in a perpetual state of rage and would not know a joke if one crawled up their legs and bit them on the tender bits. Like our non-existent grizzly bear, there was nothing to see there except a crack about the tender sensibilities of progressives, their ability to find reason for offense in anything, and their proclivity for shouting down opposing viewpoints. Everyone pulled over to the side of the road to point at nothing, for no other reason than to be one of the people on the side of the road, pointing.
On the other hand, the issue only further demonstrates that no matter how far Left one may lean, one will never lean Left enough, and that rabid progressives need only be shown the man to create the crime. So much so that apparently, they are no longer even safe from one another.
