Aha! My post hit the Discover tab because there are now people coming into my replies to pedantically argue with me. Gotta love the engagement machine!

I mean clearly it's a problem for some of y'all, but it's not on the people who POSTED to solve. And some of the complaints have been way more mean-spirited (about people's very real grief, I might add) than necessary.

Honestly, part of the beauty of social media is sharing one's pets with the world, and the good and difficult aspects of pet guardianship.

I'm so sorry for your loss, and the way it happened. But you were with your buddy until the very end, and that matters. Hugs, from this internet stranger.

Oh, FOR SURE. Like how you know something's hit the "Discover" feed because suddenly your replies are swarmed with people who have no context and don't want to look for it before popping off at you.

buuuut it'd be very difficult to scale and it would get really boring! You'd never discover new discourse like "is posting about your pet dying engagement farming" haha

a cartoon drawing of a volcano erupting with smoke coming out of it Alt: a cartoon drawing of a volcano erupting with smoke coming out of it

I just asked one of my closest friends to just please agree with me that we can throw this week into a volcano. So if you’d like to join us, please throw your week into this volcano. Just a hearty “AWAY!” will do it.

The utter lack of empathy is what gets me. Like one couldn't possibly imagine needing the words of comfort or the acknowledgement that one's pet (or even the impact of that pet on their person) mattered.

haha I almost added "get off the Discover/Popular with Friends tabs" because I do think that's part of the issue! But I also think more people on Bluesky in general could use a regular reminder to "scroll past" things that'll annoy you (including me)

There's been a steady increase in complaints this week -- that I've seen -- about how Bluesky is showing a supposedly absurd amount of "my pet died" posts. The reasoning for these complaints has been, on the whole, absurd and really lacking in empathy.

On a similar note: if you think people grieving their pets on social media is "engagement farming," your brain has been COOKED TO WELL DONE by social media and you should log off and smell a flower. Feel the breeze on your face. Fly a kite!

I feel similarly about the endless cycle of post about how bluesky is dying > discourse about why bluesky is or is not dying > discourse about why one should/shouldn't care about whether or not bluesky is or is not dying repeated ad nauseum.

I've officially seen more posts complaining about all the "my pet died" posts than I have actual "my pet died" posts.

Enough with the complaining, people, just tl;dr and scroll on by! Mute related keywords if you must, my god.

A kpop girl group called "Unchild" will debut next week, and I cannot CANNOT with this name.

Anyway, I feel Very Strong because I am. I can lift a person!

I’ve been resisting it but I fear my transformation into “gymbro” might be nearing completion. I’m about to start recording myself to check my form, tracking macros, thinking about creatine…

My back squat is now up to 185lbs, so a weight that seemed impossibly high once upon a time is now a benchmark.

Six days after we had a FREEZE warning in this area, we're already breaking heat records!

A cream cat lays on bed slats while a mattress balances precariously above his head. He is oblivious to the danger of being squashed.

Now the cream cat lays on top of the mattress…and the fitted sheet that needs to be changed. He is absolutely not helping.

there are zero (0) cats required for this task sir

A small gray cat lays on a large cardboard cat scratcher. She looks so innocent, like “I’m definitely not interested in this just because my annoying brother is.”

Jubilee never even deigned to look at this cat scratcher let alone use it…until we got another cat who loves lounging on it. Now she’s all about it.

To be fair to the dog! They did not disrupt the theatre with a ringing phone or a loud “are you fucking kidding me turn your fucking phone off” so who should be in this audience right now.

There is LITERALLY a long-haired dachshund sitting in someone’s lap in this Broadway theatre right now.

I only noticed during intermission.

Bruh I know his cousins hate him because they’re parents are for sure asking “why can’t you be like Jonny”

This feels like the punchline of a Seinfeld episode, I love it so much.

Setting aside the broader existential crisis of the overall "we live in a society but this rule doesn't apply to me" sentiment, I guarantee Clover would rather nap in a sunny spot at home than be on that Wonder Wheel.

My bench PR jumped from 85lbs to 105, which means I’m now benching with 25lb plates, a thing that once seemed laughably impossible.

“There’s something poetic about Mark Lee leaving NCT the same day that Jesus died” is not a sentence I ever expected to a) hear and b) understand.

This cat LITERALLY squabbles up to us when he gets mad that we're setting boundaries. It's like "sir, YOU followed US home."

HEAVY on the "what are you gonna do about it" energy

Oh hey, I also have an extremely muscular 13 pound blond cat who beats me up on the daily…he is also quite unapologetic about any of it

A blond short haired cat rests in a clear plastic bubble in his pink and purple cat tree, his green eyes peeking over the edge. His pink paws are visible through the plastic.

Bubble boy