Some Good News, Along With Some Bad News (and Clarification)
On October 5, 2025, I deactivated my Bluesky account @untilted.lol as I felt that, simply put, it just wasn't for me in terms of both admin moderation and self-moderation, especially when everyone noticed that its CEO dismissed and evaded concerns about transphobic and other controversial/inflammatory accounts that are still on Bluesky without these accounts being suspended. And, despite the fact that I did initially get more engagement on Bluesky compared to Mastodon in the form of likes, I decided that it wasn't worth my well-being to remain on a platform that's way too relaxed over people flinging vulgar insults at each other yet now has suddenly decided that their moderation, and the platform itself by extension, needs to change. It does feel sometimes like on X/Twitter where every post's thread would descend into a flame war (even way before Elon Musk took it over), but I wasn't very cognizant of that until I further lurked into what the Bluesky controversy was like. Now it just feels like Bluesky has turned into another X/Twitter where it's hard to stay professional and cool and collected while everyone else around you just fights each other.
Furthermore, I'll probably be called a "goody-goody" over this, but I honestly don't believe we need another catchphrase that reclaims a word that was originally intended to be a really harsh offensive insult, and suddenly act like it's the hottest trendy thing to say. These kinds of trends, to me, are how we get people adopting ideas and beliefs that may not even resonate with them in the first place, but are really just to justify whatever biases they have of certain others. It also leads to the proliferation of catchy but low-quality and actually problematic ideas that sacrifice all dignity and integrity to make them appealing to a broader audience. And then we wonder why we have vulnerable audiences repeating and unironically believing these problematic sentiments. What we should all strive to do instead is craft compelling and meaningful statements that are timeless and resonate with us all, even if it sounds "too serious" or "corny" or whatever. I just don't believe in reclaiming words that obviously have an original negative intent in the name of "making it positive and digestible" for a broader audience. To me, it's inauthentic, and, dare I say, trying too hard. And I'm not saying this out of some arbitrary standard or to feel superior. I'm saying it out of respect and care. But, I won't go out of my way to police how other people think and what they say either, unless it directly affects me, or others around me.
For the time being, I will be around on mastodon.art posting updates about my comic strip Untilted, and I will try to personalize all my posts, including self-promos, in a way that doesn't come across as too heavily reliant on copying and pasting scripts. This criticism might sting, but I'm starting to notice how the vast majority of self-promoters just drop a few standard messages, a briefly original statement (sometimes to report on updates), post an image with additional info in its alt text (or worse, post NO alt text), and that's basically it. Since noticing this, I want to aspire to be different and add more of a personal touch to my self-promotional posts while still respecting others that may not want to see these types of posts so frequently. I hope others would too. I'll have to figure this one out myself, and you'll be noticing it sooner or later from me.
Also, after a few years, I still have not been able to pick up new members on either untilted.lol (free and paid plans) or the Buy Me A Coffee version of the paid membership. I admittedly haven't been uploading much exclusive content on my website, and I haven't had the motivation to transfer that to the Buy Me A Coffee version of the paid membership due to a seemingly lack of interest in... well, anything I seem to do. I think the fault lies in the fact that I don't do much marketing beyond making promotional posts and word-of-mouth, and I don't like receiving excessive attention either, but that shouldn't have to mean that people assume that I don't want any attention at all. Another factor is that I've been having some difficulty figuring out what kinds of membership posts I would truly like to do besides just posting high-quality works in progress or behind the scenes stuff. Everybody does that. But I wish to offer more. I might create a poll on that soon. There's so many likes and favorites on my social media posts but I'm always short - and often devoid - of people offering maybe constructive artistic criticism that's understandable to help me improve on my work, or maybe someone willing to work with me in a way that doesn't just promote what they themselves have to offer but also gives me meaningful personalized advice. That's what I value more.
I think the problem lies in that both Bluesky and Mastodon, despite claiming to have no algorithms that push ads or other content on you, paradoxically push people with the most followers with the most popular/relevant perspectives on their respective "Discover" feeds, while a lot of genuine self-promo and mutual aid posts from users with a smaller follower base get buried, or worse falsely reported (depending on how one interprets it). The differences between them are that Bluesky emphasizes algorithmic timelines while allowing users to customize those feeds to not rely on trending posts all the time, along with making follower count signals more uniform by concentrating influential users (this was made more apparent when Bluesky introduced the "Verified" feature for "important and culturally relevant" accounts and made people sign up for that via Google Forms). While Mastodon's "Discover" feed is more instance dependent and sometimes moderated depending on the instance, in addition to localizing certain users with high follower counts to an instance or across instances, which means it depends on how well said instance federates with others.
But that's not the only issue. Bluesky appears to be more friendly towards those who self-promote/market their content to anyone seeing their posts, while views on this user behavior on Mastodon tend to be very mixed and fragmented. I've seen some instances ban any kind of self-promotion by users on their own instance. I've also seen others welcome it, but to the extent that spam waves and other automated behavior become common at worst. A quote from me:
"I've seen people who happen to have small indie businesses get called out for "engagement farming". Conversely, I've seen these same smaller people told they're "not trying hard enough" if nobody still acknowledges their business after 6 months or more. And given a bunch of "suggestions" or "hacks" that only appeal to larger corporate companies.
The truth is, there really seems to be no winning formula for meaningful online interaction, whether it's to promote a business or just hang out with people or even just to ask for mutual aid. When someone attempts to make strategic posts designed to maximize engagement (regardless of whether that someone is running a business or not), that someone is criticized for being inauthentic. Yet, when that same someone attempts to pivot to genuine, sincere interactions, there is nothing but minimal response, or worse, dismissive, vague responses that seem to make fun of that someone."
On both Bluesky and Mastodon, I've only had up to, like, less than 10 people genuinely interact with my work in a meaningful way. The others just clicked the like button. I rarely actually get likes or even a single repost/boost on Mastodon, however, unless it was an opinion on something that everyone seems to agree with.
At the same time, I don't want to act like just because Bluesky and Mastodon share similarities in some flaws, it should have to mean I'll have to see them both negatively, as I like it way much better on Mastodon. I don't want to see myself turn into someone that does things to get likes or stir up controversy to get negative attention. I don't want to have to appeal to what the majority likes. I don't want to have to cater to other people's interests to the detriment of my own genuine ones. And I especially do not want to alienate anyone at all, except maybe some truly harmful people like those who discriminate against the marginalized, but that's all. So I am trying to strike a balance here. And I would like to open myself up to any criticism or accountability if needed.
In other news, I'm still retaining my Pinterest account as I actually want to post more regularly on that even though I'm seeing people say that Pinterest is currently not a good place to be due to the platform's recent random bans on people. However I want to clarify that I have opted out on the AI thing that Pinterest wanted to force on us, and, despite being a business account, I want to mix some personality into my self-promotional posts, I have not faced any disciplinary action and I am still on good standing. If you think I should make some changes like reverting to a personal account or closing Pinterest entirely, I might do so since I don't get much traffic. I watermark all my social media imagery using artshield.io to protect it against AI scraping and stuff like that, but I'm open to other alternatives (since it sometimes fails to watermark certain images despite them not having a white background. ugh). I'm also still on Side 7, but lately it's been ticking me off due to the lack of interaction I get and the fact that no one responds to my inquiries except the moderators and admins (who are helpful sometimes).
I'm also looking forward to new comic platforms (no tapas.io or webtoon please) and I wanted to try ComicFury webcomic hosting but the last time I contacted them they were unresponsive. So I preferably want something like ComicFury or preferably help in coding something that allows serial art to be shown in an accessible manner, as some platforms lack the ability to add alt text (especially Buy Me A Coffee's gallery). I'll also work on making my alt text more descriptive and nicer to read. If anyone has any useful suggestions on this matter, reach out to me if you can.
In the meanwhile one can support me on either Buy Me A Coffee or my website through signing up for any of the plans and creating an account.. To date, the latest issue I've done is #83 and can be viewed here. (I've fixed an error on my last one)
I'm also going to revamp Untilted's lore and character profile a bit, to clarify some things and make more sense.
Any suggestions, criticism, etc. relevant to this post are welcome!
For any inquiries or feedback, please contact me at this email right here. (When commenting on a blog post, kindly include “Re: [insert blog post name here]” in the subject line.)