One of Bluesky’s breakout moments came last week when news broke that satirical news outlet the Onion purchased Alex Jones’ Infowars.
The site exploded in glee, so much so that the app crashed for hours.
Now, another big satirical news site hopped onto Bluesky. But the conservative Babylon Bee’s reception was, well, a whole bunch of nothing.
And they definitely aren’t mad about it.
Bluesky users have been proactive in keeping the site from devolving into the same cesspool of anti-trans bigotry that X is now.
So naturally, when the Babylon Bee opened off its account with a transphobic joke, it was met with a few meager retweets and a healthy heaping of mockery.
For its foray, it decided to share not the most pressing piece of the day, but a two-year-old story mocking President Joe Biden’s assistant secretary at the Human Health and Services Department.
“The Babylon Bee’s Man Of The Year Is Rachel Levine,” @realbabylonbee.bsky.social wrote.
The post got just 24 reshares but a slew of comments.
“You guys are rodents to society,” wrote one.
The post was also labeled as “Intolerant” by Bluesky’s moderation team.
Which led the Babylon Bee to … share it again. And then again. To diminishing returns.
“Our post was mistakenly labeled the first time, so we thought we should run it back,” they wrote on the third go around.
Said one user in response to the repeated shares and mocking the Babylon Bee’s faux concern over being moderated: “They’re actually just waiting for you guys to come up with a second joke to prove you’re not a bot.”
While the reception has been cool on Bluesky, the editor-in-chief of the Babylon Bee turned to X to harp on it… not being X.
“Our first post on Blue Sky was moderated and labeled ‘intolerant.’ Remember when Twitter was like this before Elon? Feels like ages ago,” he wrote.
People in the replies agreed.
“So there’s nothing innovative about their platform, it’s just old Twitter.”
But if new Twitter’s what they want, and new Twitter’s what they got, the only reason to wade into a different social media site with a two-year-old crack at a transgender person that you know is going to get censored is well, not the big laugh they seem to think it is.
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