A question is asked and answered:

Highly neurotic, antagonistic, passive-aggressive. Borderline. https://t.co/xFEKa2jooG

— J.D. Haltigan, PhD 🏒👨‍💻 (@JDHaltigan) May 24, 2026

Bluesky is, it has to be said, a strange, unhappy place. One where everything, but everything, is fraught, problematic and seething with complication.

Including grilled cheese sandwiches and the paranormal:

Readers may recall previous mentions of the platform as a favoured watering hole for those who demand the pre-emptive deletion of untoward thoughts:

Got banned from BIuesky within the first 30 seconds for posting a biological fact pic.twitter.com/uxQzPVn2SR

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) November 17, 2024

People so immensely progressive that they are enraged by even polite statements of fact. Such that, in response to polite statements of fact, they issue repeated, quite colourful death threats and publicly share the polite person’s home address, including photos of his front door and directions to the nearest subway station.

One might almost appreciate the attention to detail.

People so immensely progressive that they then complain that the person being threatened, by them, has taken screenshots of said threats. Because, in the world of the immensely progressive, that constitutes harassment, the “doxing” of trans people, and indeed “trying to have them killed.” By simply quoting their own words.

Update, via the comments:

Rafi quotes this,

And adds,

Answers on a postcard, please.

The whole thing had an air of inversion and unrealism, of something not unlike madness. It called to mind the James Damore ‘Google memo’ incident, detailed here, or Cathy Newman’s bewildering interview with Jordan Peterson. It didn’t feel like a difference in political outlook, so much as one of incompatible psychology. It became quite surreal.

At one point, Mr Singal was the most blocked person on Bluesky*, with mass reporting campaigns and a petition of at least 18,000 Bluesky users demanding that he be banished immediately. Amid endless, openly malicious efforts at defamation and numerous, quite vivid demands that he be killed, with helpful instructions on how to go about that task.

The participants in this weird fever included Harvard-educated professionals, or supposed professionals, and alleged champions of decency and justice. Albeit of a kind who favour gratuitous pronouns in their bios, and who claim that the US is a “totalitarian fascist state.”

And lest we forget, this uproar, this psychotic reaction – what some have dubbed a tightening purity spiral – was not a result of Mr Singal being rude or abusive or racist or indecent, or anything of that sort. But for politely correcting factual errors and suggesting that maybe, just maybe, children shouldn’t be drugged and mutilated such that their lives will be forever ruined.

That’s quite a feat.

Much of the left-leaning tech-related media joined in the farce, of course, with claims that “marginalised communities” – people “who escaped Twitter” – escaped! – “now feel their Bluesky experience is at risk because of Singal’s joining.” As if he, one man, a political liberal who has only ever voted for Democrat candidates, were befouling their paradise, their refuge, “harassing” users with his polite statements of fact.

Taken as a snapshot of progressive psychology, a general mindset – like the ‘Google memo’ saga and the Cathy Newman interview – it was quite… revealing.

*That title, of most blocked, is now held by JD Vance, The official White House account, and the US Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The results can be… revealing:

You see, caring about your family, your ancestors, your lineage, your children, is “actually absurd,” apparently. And by implication, some kinds of context – where you came from, say – are to be scorned as worthless.

An earlier, related exchange comes to mind:

One more time:

I’m guessing that’s some kind of progressive metaphysics.

Though I doubt mere obliviousness would fully explain this phenomenon. There’s an element of contrivance, of affectation and perversity.

Mr Convente is currently invoking victimhood – because people have read his pronouncements and have either laughed or pointed out why those pronouncements are unconvincing. Mr Convente is also calling Mr Burkett various vulgar terms and is insinuating some nefarious racial motive, despite offering no actual evidence to that effect.

Because if you pause to consider the physical basis of family, even in measured terms, and if you point out the logical idiocy of the “It’s only by chance you were born to said ancestors” school of thought, seemingly favoured by so many progressives, then this can only be explained by some seething racial animus. Apparently.

Mr Convente also declares, with some pride, “I don’t want kids.” Being, as he puts it, “too selfish.”

Our Betters, ladies and gentlemen. See their pieties shine.

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading, of course.

Lifted from the comments, a revealing choice of words:

Also, while there is nothing wrong… Again, a revealing tone, I think.

Mr Yglesias, since you ask, is currently said to earn around $1.4 million a year, chiefly from his 18,000 Substack subscribers. It therefore seems quite likely that he has savings and investments of some sort. I wonder what it is that he thinks happens to that money while he’s terribly busy complaining about the rich.

I paraphrase, of course. Though not, I think, wildly:

The alleged harms of debate and the citing of statistics are not mere rudeness or a failure to flatter, but “lasting psychological damage.” Because statistics can do that, apparently.

What might constitute controversy in the minds of such implausibly delicate creatures is not made clear, though we are told that the terms “blind review,” “handicap parking” and “immigrant” were considered “harmful language” by Stanford University’s IT department. Which does rather suggest a kind of neurotic contrivance.

Humble, you say. We’ll get to that in a second.

You can guess where this one’s going.

And,

And what better gift to the world than imposing your own hang-ups and inadequacies on everyone else, quite emphatically, at every opportunity?

And then we arrive at this glorious conundrum:

The study, found here, informs us that those most keen to pre-emptively shut down discussion, including by vigorous means, also “rated themselves as higher in… empathy.”

The inversions of progressive “empathy” – and its routine departure from reality – have of course been poked at here before.

And regarding those claims of humility, nothing says, ‘I entertain the possibility that my assumptions may be wrong’ like forbidding any and all attempts at contradiction.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Lifted from the comments, which you’re reading of course, this strikes me as broadly accurate:

Much of the content here that’s about crime, antisocial behaviour and recreational malice is informed by a fairly visceral dislike of expectations of exemption and immunity – and actual immunity – from normal moral consequences. Consequences that I would expect to befall me, were I sufficiently selfish and unpleasant to engage in similar behaviour.

Hence the term The Unspanked.

Likewise, were I to move to a distant country, hoping to flourish, it would not occur to me to behave as these vibrant newcomers do. Or in ways seen quite vividly here. Were I to repeatedly violate the values and decencies of the indigenous, as if I owed nothing to those on whom I impose – as if their values, their expectations of reciprocation, were contemptible – then I would very much expect my welcome to be withdrawn.

And quite promptly.

Update, via the comments:

Rafi adds, drily,

Indeed. The convolutions of which, we’ve poked at before.

While Chow Bag quips,

Well, yes. There does seem to be a lot of frantic, rather neurotic calculation as to whether normal rules should apply, depending on the pigmentation or cross-dressing tendencies of the perpetrator, to whom indulgence must be extended. If you squint and pretend. If you perform the necessary contortions.

And so, we arrive at scenes like this, or these, in which malevolent bedlamites, beings clearly driven by spite, expect to be spared normal consequences, to which the rest of us would be subject, and merrily exploit their assumptions of immunity. Behaving in ways that, for anyone else, would likely result in a good kicking.

Needless to say, this is not a recipe for a fragrant tomorrow.