Last month landing in Munich on a stopover from Paris the pilot made an announcement as we were taxing to the gate. He said if we looked out the window we’d see several emergency vehicles heading towards the plane, that there was nothing to worry about but one of the passengers was having a medical emergency and the medics needed to get on the plane and help the person off and this needed to happen before anyone else could get off the plane. He asked everyone to please be considerate and remain in their seats once we pulled up to the gate, explicitly asking people not to stand up in the isles or start taking down suitcases because it would block the path, and the medics needed a clear path to get in and out. He said this should only take a few minutes and again asked everyone for their cooperation to help one of their fellow passengers. He thanked everyone, then repeated the request in German and French.
As soon as we got to the gate a guy stood up and opened an over head bin and pulled out his suitcase. He had headphones on and it was possible he didn’t hear the announcement, and a few of the people around him told him what was going on, and he paused for a moment. About 10 medical emergency workers rushed into the plane and down the aisle towards the middle of the plane and people stayed calmly in their seats… for about 30 seconds. Then they started getting up and getting their bags. Flight attendants started calling out asking people to stop and wait and these requests were largely ignored. People grabbed their bags and pushed into the aisle blocking the medical staff. The woman in the row behind us, who was in the window seat, told the people in the middle and aisle seats in her row to get out of her way, that she had a connecting flight and wasn’t going to wait any longer and pushed past them. Others did the same. The normal “wait my turn and get off when the line allows” method of plane disembarkment fell completely apart and became pushing shoving madness.
I watched from my seat as the flight attendants threw their hands up in frustration and forfeit. The medical team shook their heads in disgust. I have no idea what the medical emergency was, or if they were able to do anything to help or not, everyone kind of got lost in the crowd. I bright this up only because it was a pretty brutal display of how long people are willing to be inconvenienced for the benefit of a stranger. It’s less than a minute. If you have high hopes for the majority of people doing the right thing for everyone else, you are going to end up disappointed. That story has nothing to do with the rest of this piece, just sharing for the fun of it.
Speaking of disappointed, I've written a lot about social media and the state of it at various times, as well as my participation (or not) in various aspects of it. Most famously this piece from over a decade ago about why I don't use Facebook. More recently I wrote about many of the different current offerings though that was pretty extensive and several months later I've mostly decided to focus my efforts and wanted to share my thinking, and where to find me - I'm not going to list every account I have everywhere, just the ones I'm actively looking at.
The old:
I'm @seanbonner on X - I was indignantly calling this Twitter long after the name change but I have to admit the X of today is nothing like the Twitter of yesterday, and essentially everything I loved about it has been replaced with things I hate. As one of the first 140 people to join Twitter, this one has been had to accept and let go of. I still have a blue check because at the beginning of last year I paid for a year, and even though I cancelled it a long time ago it persists along with increasing "your premium account is expires soon!" warnings, so I expect that to go away soon and along with that any visibility I used to have there. The only reason I keep the account is because CryptoTwitter - the community there - still hasn't entirely moved anywhere else and it's like this tiny pocked of joy and inspiration and friends and hope surrounded by a moat of bot vomit and trolls. I will continue to encourage everyone there to go elsewhere.
I'm @seanbonner on Instagram - I made excuses to justify Instagram while avoiding Facebook for a long time but the worse Meta gets the hander that is to do with a straight face. While this used to be a great place to connect with other photographers, the algo sucks and the new image format sucks and the ads suck and everything sucks so while I'm keeping the account for the name and will probably crossposts for a while, the future sees far less of me there. (Also I have an account for my noise project Drone War because again, the noise community seems to only be there at this point.)
The now:
I'm @seanbonner.com on Bluesky - I wrote before that this is the most Twitter like of the Twitter alternatives, and I think that's in part why it's gotten critical mass. Technically Bluesky is the front end built on the open AT protocol which anyone can build on so you aren't locked into anything, and only you own your content and social graph (followers). There's no ads or algo manipulating the feed, so you see posts by the people you follow. Using your own domain to verify is brilliant. Blocking and mutes work, and so far there's a pretty low percentage of troll bots. The only real complaint I have right now is that the lack of a real crypto community there has allowed a ridiculous flood of long debunked 2021-era rumors which people with large followings state as if they are facts, to much applause and fanfare. So that's a little gross, but hopefully it shifts in the near future.
I'm @seanbonner.photos on Flashes - Flashes is an Instagram like interface for AT Protocol while it's technically also a Bluesky account, the content is more designed to be viewed in Flashes, which ignores text posts and beautifully presents imagery. Currently Flashes is iOS only, and it's a single dev project, however they just celebrated 50k downloads from the App Store so I hope the growing popularity allows them to bring in some more people and expand to web & Android soon. I made a dedicated account for this app rather than just use my main, because I wanted this to really photos on photography and visual art, and not get sidelined by random news or drama of the day.
I'm @seanbonner on Telegram - This is actually my favorite place to hang out, largely because I'm in small well curated groups so it's more of a bunch of private group chats, but that's really what I want out of social media anyway - a good way to talk to my friends.
More privately, I'm @seanbonner.01 on Signal - in a perfect world I'd migrate all my Telegram groups and chats to Signal, and we'd all turn on disappearing messages and sleep much more soundly knowing we're not being snooped on. Alas, this tends to be more for friends who are tech savvy and paying attention to privacy and security issues. (Related, I'm also on Session which is it's own thing, built outside of the US but using some Signal tech. If you need to reach me securely and don't want to use Signal ping me and I'll give you my account)
While talking about this forthcoming post over the last few days a number of people have asked me if I've I've tried this or that app which they are really liking, and the answer almost universally was "yes, but.." the "but" being that it was yet another centralized app that will eventually have the same problems as all previous centralized social media services and at this point I'm not going to commit to or spend time building a following on anything like that. I've done it too many times and it's groundhogs day at this point. The only way I'm seriously considering anything is if it's decentralized / built on web3 foundations, because if I choose to leave I want to take my stuff with me - I don't want to keep starting over from scratch.
And again, I'm on a few other apps which I've mentioned before I just don't actively check them. That's it for now, if you aren't there yet come hang out on Bluesky.
