Ask not for whom the Louvre of Bluesky tolls, it tolls for thee

It’s a tragic weekend over at Bluesky, the place among the best accounts has disappeared — though we will nonetheless hope for its resurrection.

Often known as The Louvre of Bluesky, the account in query struck worry into the hearts of unhealthy posters in every single place. Whereas it posted commentary and jokes of its personal, its most brutally humorous and haunting work got here within the type of screenshots capturing rogue Bluesky posts in all their unhinged glory.

It’s arduous to put in writing a correct appreciation now that the Louvre has vanished, and it’s actually not possible to create a full taxonomy of the all forms of poster’s disease it managed to seize within the wild. Maybe the defining attribute of posts memorialized within the Louvre of Bluesky — past the straightforward failure to get a joke — was a scolding tone, together with a way of absolute outrage that somebody, someplace could be having enjoyable on the web.

Perhaps I’m projecting an excessive amount of onto a screenshot-filled nameless social media account, however to me, it at all times felt like the precise reverse of the tedious, ad nauseum complaints that Bluesky is a liberal echo chamber. This wasn’t somebody who’d spent a couple of minutes on the positioning simply to substantiate their suspicions and write the umpteenth model of the identical op-ed. Whether or not they beloved Bluesky or hated it, whoever operated the account clearly knew the positioning’s darkest corners; they understood what absolute weirdos its customers may very well be.

The account additionally felt, at instances, like a warning — that any of us, in a second of weak spot, may put up one thing clueless or cringe. Simply figuring out the Louvre of Bluesky was on the market was sufficient to scare me (not usually sufficient, I’m certain) into deleting a few dumb or apparent replies.

So the place has the Louvre of Bluesky gone? In a post on Patreon, the account’s creator mentioned it will be taken down “quickly” as a consequence of “a loser and a coward” emailing their bosses and their spouse’s bosses. They added that they’re “undecided if the account will keep closed.”

It’s not a lot to go on. I can solely hope that like the real museum, the Louvre of Bluesky will be capable to reopen quickly. However even when it doesn’t, its spirit will proceed haunting all of us who bear in mind we’re only a few keystrokes away from being immortalized for a nasty put up.