X marked the long-awaited death of Chelsea Twitter

Musk's shark-jumping final form only cemented what had been coming for years

Are you on Bluesky yet?

Truthfully, it was only on Thursday morning did I discover this new social media app that several of my favoured Chelsea accounts had begun to migrate to.

Was this just another Mastodon? Or Threads? I quickly set up an account and found a thriving timeline and very healthy looking community. People were thoughtfully sharing their passions, detailing their opinions on subjects and supporting like-minded accounts. This very much is the honeymoon period for a brave new planet of good discourse.

The cynic in me fears that the influx of users will eventually cause the long-standing toxicity that has plagued almost every other social media site. Though the hope precedes that it becomes something worthwhile and uplifting.

This eXodus had been coming for a very long time. Sure, the US Elections and Elon Musk has seemed to spark this mass move to Bluesky. The Guardian announcing they are no longer posting on X and even Bundesliga club St. Pauli have followed the trend.

Whilst X becoming X, paid verification and the “For You” page firmly made it a mostly unusable hellscape, this path was started long before Musk took charge.

I can only speak to the corner of what was once Twitter I mostly traded in. That being the corner of Chelsea FC and everything related.

The rift probably festered most clearly during the Maurizio Sarri season. That year was when a deep cultural divide set in, when factions became clearer, the #CFCFamily if ever there was one truly fragmented.

This only became worse during the pandemic, arguably for multiple psychological reasons. The lockdowns and isolation forcing all football discourse to a keyboard, meaning already fringe segments only became louder. A growing trend of accounts turning into YouTube channels purely built off the most divisive opinions to burn through engagement.

The Super League protests of April 2021 briefly sparked something better, however, I would argue this mostly came through actual people gathering in actual places rather than jumping on a #.

Almost everything that followed only solidified the downward trend. Comments sections became breeders of abuse and bot accounts. Paid subscriptions only cultivated an obsession with engagement, leading to fake controversies being sparked between big accounts, or as of this past summer, jumping on anyone who dared question the direction of the club.

Even if I have returned for mere days since, it was around July during the Euros I came to the long-needed conclusion the site just wasn’t worth my time or energy anymore. The preconception that you NEEDED to be on there for professional reasons just did not add up, especially when noticing that the people who followed my show still did no matter if the latest video was shared on X. Once I left, it felt like a toxic mist evaporating from the air. Freedom.

You’ll be surprised how differently you view a Chelsea game without any knowledge of what the TL is saying about it. How much better you take setbacks, how much more nuanced takes become about players, preferring to have real conversations with friends and family are far more productive that having some avi tell you to CRY MORE. Or witness the latest deranged attacks on hard-working supporter groups or loyal match going fans. Spot the latest player singled out for vile treatment by accounts that purport to have Chelsea’s best interests at heart.

The incentives on X have been off for a very long time. The concept of good-faith discourse died many years ago. If the first retort to any different opinion you read about your club infers you are not a real supporter, are paid off by the club, or/and a personal insult, the game has already been lost.

If you know certain provocateurs post stuff without fully believing it themselves makes the whole thing a sickeningly shallow exercise. Made worse by the fact some of these characters are then gifted major platforms by supposedly serious broadcasters, who clearly care little for the betterment of the discourse.

Most reasonable people who just would like a place to connect with like minded fans of the same thing either completely tune out, or are dragged down by the swamp themselves. You end up making posts against everything rather than for anything.

Points you make about players, managers etc. are made with a tinge of bitterness to get back at some other tribe on the site you feel wronged by. It is a cultural war that will never end and the incentives are sadly weighted by the side who behaves more dishonestly, abusively and only enhance the toxicity.

The biggest shame of this is that in the Chelsea space, these divides have created wide and probably unfair assumptions. That only those who go the Bridge all the time “get” the club. You can probably add more dividing lines that have been forged throughout the past six years.

The reality many of us came to contend with years ago is that X/Twitter was gone and the once more supportive and enjoyable space was never coming back. You could no longer just log on and casually browse if you wished to avoid the worst parts of it.

You intentionally had to take steps to avoid it. Be that using TweetDeck (before it was paid), creating separate lists of your favourite accounts, going private, setting up a list of muted words and phrases you no longer could bare to see. The user experience became a chore and a complex series of safeguarding measures needed to just get a satisfactory experience.

Even then, forgo opening your comments if you have a larger following, turn off notifications, shut down DM requests completely.

Why go through all of this just to not be inundated with a steady stream of hate?

I firmly believe the vast majority of fans who go online want to engage with the club they follow, keep up with the latest news and share opinions in a respectful way. The positives of Twitter were the friends we made along the way. The people I have connected with from Brazil to Bracknell who follow Chelsea.

It would be childish to suggest Twitter offered me absolutely nothing. From a professional point of view there were opportunities that presented themselves over time, and networking that might have been more difficult to attain elsewhere in all truth.

However, that is the past. The need for a healthier alternative has never been greater, which hopefully Bluesky provides us with.