Did you know that “Elon Musk” is an anagram for “Lone Skum?” Just sayin’.

This assclown has ruined The App Formerly Known As Twitter for me since he bought it. I mean, it’s not like I loved Twitter before that, but he made it worse. I’m not going to waste time getting into specifics, but even if he hadn’t actually changed anything about how the app works, I’d still find it hard to justify to continue using it just knowing that he owns it. I don’t want to support him even in the slightest way.

The problem is that even with my engagement and views having dropped significantly over recent months, it’s still one of the most effective methods for sharing links to my blogs. Checking my WordPress stats page, which shows where people are finding my blog from, after general search engines (297,379) Twitter is the 3rd-highest direct-referrer (8,448) to this blog, after Reddit (11,207) and Pinterest (10,918). So I don’t want to give it up just yet. I deleted the app from my phone months ago, only still using it on my home PC, and have restricted most of my uses to sharing my links and occasionally retweeting posts from certain friends of mine, but I want to just log off for good. So I’ve been trying to find a suitable alternative and. I thought I’d go over a few today.

First, three that I’ve tried and already given up on are Post.News, Counter Social and…um, Truth Social.

Yeah, I know that last one probably sounds crazy, if I hate the idea of using an app owned by Elon Musk why would I want to use an app owned by Donald Fucking Trump?!?

Well, that was mostly just a joke. I knew it would be pointless, but I downloaded the app and signed up, but I didn’t care about it. And since most of my links are for reviews of things like Softcore movies and TV shows, not to mention the XXX reviews on my adult blog, I just thought it would be funny to see if I got any hits from posting there with all the right-wing conservatives. So I was on it for about 3 months, in terms of use it’s rather easy to use as it’s basically a straightforward Twitter clone, just that tweets were called “truths” and retweets were called “retruths.” I didn’t engage anyone on it, just posted links to blog posts. But eventually, the novelty wore off and I realized, I’m using an app owned by Donald Fucking Trump! So I deleted it.

I was only on the other two for a few weeks. Post.News was mostly just Twitter, except everyone just posts links to news articles. And other than George Takai I couldn’t find anyone interesting to follow. And I didn’t know anyone on Counter Social. I looked at Mastodon, but it seemed too confusing, so I never bothered signing up.

But the one I really like is SPOUTIBLE!

It’s Black-owned, which is an immediate plus for me. And it’s also quite similar to Twitter, thus making it easy to navigate. It has a whale icon instead of a bird, tweets are called “spouts” and retweets are called “echoes.” The post limit is 300 characters, you can post images and gifs, and you can create polls, and it’s got hashtags to follow topics. It’s a nice little community, and if it were up to me this would be my main Twitter replacement. But I fear that it’s getting lost in the shuffle of all these apps. I think the original intent was for this to be the new home of the “Black Twitter” participants (although I should be clear, it’s open and welcoming to people of all races), but it hasn’t really made the impact that I think it could. I think it would help if some celebrities, even b-listers, would join and start posting regularly, to bring attention to the app (Alyssa Milano is on it, but barely used it). But I’ll be sticking with it for as long as it’s running.

I’m also on TRIBEL.

This also feels like it has potential, and is easy to use. One thing I like about it is when you post on it (you can share links and images, they also have hashtags, I don’t know if there’s a character limit), you can select a specific topic to share it to, so it anyone searching that topic will see it. So if I’m reviewing a comic book, I can share it to “Graphic Novels/Comics”, for example. It makes reaching a target audience easier, but it doesn’t seem that conducive to building a following overall, no real sense of community.

I’m also on BLUESKY SOCIAL.

Now this was supposed to be the big Twitter-killer. It was founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. It’s also very similar to Twitter, although they don’t have hashtags yet. But you can also post images and gifs. And I like that it lets you mark your content as adults only, if necessary, and people can set their profiles as to whether they want to see adult content or not, so you don’t have to worry about getting reported or banned. The problem is, that it’s still closed to the general public, you can’t even see it without being logged in, which limits its usefulness as a blog-sharing platform. I signed up to the email waiting list back in February, and still never got an invite. I only finally got on in Sept. when a friend of my brother’s had a couple of codes that he gave us. I don’t know what’s taking them so long to open it up, I think that sort of “exclusivity” is good to drive interest in the beginning, making people eager to join, but if you wait too long then by the time you open people don’t care anymore. That could be what’s happening already. I’ve gotten several invite codes since I joined, but I can hardly give them away. I think Thread may have already stolen all of their thunder.

Speaking of which, I just finally joined THREADS a few days ago.

I was avoiding this because I don’t care for Mark Zuckerberg all that much more than I like Elon Musk. Just going from one White billionaire owner to the next. And I hated that I had to create an Instagram account, which I don’t need, just to be able to join Threads. But, like it or not, it’s currently the most likely Twitter alternative to stick around, just due to its connection to IG and Facebook. So I’m on it, because it may be necessary at some point, but I don’t have an opinion on its effectiveness yet.

I’m also on the waiting list for an app called SPILL, another Black-owned app, but it’s currently only available in the Apple Store, and I have a Samsung Galaxy phone, but it’s supposed to be coming to Google Play “soon,” so I’ll check it out when I can.

So at this point, it’s just a matter of waiting and seeing who’s left on the social media battlefield when the dust is settled. Either way though, I think I’m going to be done with The App Formerly Known As Twitter at the end of the year. I’m giving it one more month, but then I’m logging out on Jan. 1st until there are new owners.