Barack Obama joins Bluesky

Boomer here. I was part of the “take it to the streets” movement in the 60s. (And don’t let anyone tell you that protesting doesn’t work). We organized without social media, we were fearless, and we were focused. We NEVER expected anyone to use their influence to help. Don’t throw your anger onto others for what you are not willing to do. Something else we had going for us…musicians. We had musicians that wrote the most amazing anti-establishment songs. They were like a call to arms. Where are the poets and musicians?
- Jesse Welles is worth looking into. I have a feeling you will enjoy them.
- As the child of boomers, I couldn't agree more. This is something I've been struggling to find as well.
  For those that need some musical/cultural inspiration as I did:
  My favorite Hip-hop song to protest to: https://youtu.be/y9oUnC8JtXY
  My favorite Dance song to protest to: https://youtu.be/PuWVgVkMiHE
  Best Comedian to make you laugh about MAGAts (emphasis on the low T): Cliff Cash https://youtu.be/PPkqBK_Tox0
  Best overall peaceful protest vibes:
  Rage Against the Machines station on Spotify.
  This is what inspires me, if you have anything that inspires you please share! Let's give each other hope to change the world.
- Musicians be counting dollar bills
  
  Well, some of them at least. Everyone else runs their shows at a loss.
  
  Relatively few musicians are counting dollar bills. Publishers are, Spotify and the tech-bros who have inserted themselves between musicians and their fans are. But the musicians writing protest music are busking on TikTok in the evenings after working day jobs to afford rent. I hate to recommend a sinking ship, but unironically, if you are looking for music about the current moment, it's on TikTok. Some of it makes it's way to other platforms, but the average person won't find it because music discovery on the mainstream music platforms is curated by corporations who are out to make money for the big record labels.
  
  We need them to be counting stars ✨ instead of Dollars 💵

Not that it matters but I just deleted my Blyesky account.

Could've been mastodon but at least it's not shitter
- Obama never struck me as being personally interested in the free web, his move to bs shows he's an attention whore who has simply sensed the trend
  
  I think he even had a blog on medium or something. I'm pretty sure he's not a tech nerd like us but he does like the idea of having an independent voice.

Good news

With a sort of "Obama awards Obama" post but I'll still take him 100x over Donald Musk.
- Don't forget the Obamium either.

Who gives a fuck. Do something with your influence instead of letting Trump fuck people over.
- Yeah the silence and not seeing ex living Presidents including Bush speak out on Trumps actions is bizarre to say the least.
  People with the most capacity of reach dont use it.
  
  Because it’s a game to them all. It’s rich vs poor and Trump’s bad decisions don’t hurt the rich so there’s zero urgency from people like Obama. They’ll still go on their private jet vacation next week regardless.
- Who knows, maybe the system has declined too far beyond saving. Maybe we're already in Russia-stage of "democracy" where dissent gets them out of a window? We already have a former US Attorney dead. 🤷‍♂️
- I can think of two possibilities, either they think don't get in the way when your enemy is making a mistake. If they can get to 2026, maybe it will be a democratic landslide. Or he knows where the bodies are buried for both sides, if there ever were two sides and they are terrified of getting exposed.
  
  The wait and see strategy doesn't work and it won't work now.
- This is the first part of that. The top news media in cable tv, podcasting, and social media are all run as maga propaganda and I think that's a massively underrated reason for Trump's winning. The easiest of these to take down is social media, but it requires all the other news-related celebrities to go somewhere else.
  
  Reddit and Lemme are right leaning?
  I had no idea, does it seem that way on this post?
- Man's allowed to retire like anyone else. Save the country yourself. When's the last time you went camping or shooting?
- Dude, fuck off. This is an article about Obama, not Obama saying "hey look at me i joined it." In fact the first items were advocating for the ACA showing how it helped people. Trying to push people to stand up together for the common good.
  Do you mean somthing like that when you say "Do something with your influence?"
  
  That was a milquetoast message of hope at best, to the same level of thoughts and prayers.
  Endorsing people actually on the ground trying to resist the Nazification of the US would already be a big step up instead of a Obama giving a medal to Obama level meme of self congratulatory pat on the back.
- like what
  
  Educate the public about their rights, freedoms, and upcoming fed and state elections.
  Bring people together to stand up for democracy and to go on strike against republican corporations profiting on the backs of people, contaminating the water, air, and land, and illegally detaining people or shipping them off to torture prisons in third world countries.
  
  I just remembered, former presidents have immunity.
  So just...
  (Does Obama happen to like going hunting? 😏)
  
  Rally people to take concrete action for one. Go with AOC and Sanders on their tour.
  Challenge all the bullshit executives orders in front of a judge, or give visibility to any group doing such a thing.
  Call out old fucks like Schumer.
  Any small effort to mobilise people to do something about what's going on.
  His notoriety will give a lot of weight to what he supports or call out.
  
  Stand outside white house gate and give a press conference about how fucked everything is.
  Join a protest crowd near a Tesla
  Go to a trump/musk conference (or some of their top goons) and ask them some questions
  When they chain up another department, show up with some boltcutters

Ditch X, dump Tesla, and maybe one day... drop Starlink? (Just saying I'm not hearing this boycott)
- probably because for most individual consumers it's a choice of last resort. if they had access to usable DSL/cable they'd choose that instead (cheaper, simpler), but have had to turn to starlink to get online where they live.
  
  id be pretty sure that the broadband expansion to rural areas projects in the biden administration was working on will grind to a halt if they havent already.
  how maga people watch musk and dismantle public services and give billions of dollars in subsidies to musk's businesses and still think they're fighting for them is just otherworldly levels of cognitive dissonance management

Is it real or a fake account?
- Real account
  Source:
  https://bsky.app/profile/rose.bsky.team/post/3ll2dryvoa22f
  https://bsky.app/profile/pfrazee.com/post/3ll2eh47ius2e
- barry plz

ok

Oh boy half the comments in here I can't see because I blocked people. Hee hee!
Well, whatever you're saying, I'm glad I can't see it.
Thanks Obama!
- And here I thought people left reddit to try to break out of their bullshit bubbles...
  
  Nothing's making you block people or communities. But since there's no algorithm and the mods are pretty hands-off, it's useful. IMO.
- Please export your ignore list haha.
  
  It's a great idea (afaict Voyager doesn't have an export function), that would help a bunch of new people to get going I think.
- Wait... you can see them but also not see them? How does that work?
  
  It shows [# replies] but nothing below.

Now we can yell at one of america's most mediocre presidents, actors, and movie producers.
Edit: as somebody pointed out he's not a director, he's a movie producer and actor per IMDB
- Nobody in the US ever calls the President a "director."
  Nice.
  
  Sorry, it looks like he's a movie producer and actor not a director. I'll update it. I thought he had a more involved role
  https://m.imdb.com/name/nm1682433/
- Bot says what?
  
  Did I stutter? Obama squandered a huge mandate. I'm not saying he's a bad president like trump or bush, just a mediocre one, who could have done more but never rose to the moment. He also won the dem primary by poisoning the well against clinton which was a component of her 2016 loss.
  And look at fucking Carter, spent his post presidency helping people.
  Obama spent his whole post president career jacking off and chumming up with a bunch of tv celebrities. He's a mediocre president whose smug charisma presaged trumps smug charisma. Why live in denial?
- I wonder why you're getting down voted. Obama led us directly to trump.
  
  If you mean Trump was America’s revenge for having a non-white president, then sure
  
  It’s one thing to claim racist bigots voted for Trump as a retaliation to the Obama administration. It’s another thing to claim it’s Obama’s fault that we got Trump.
  
  Its the same american goldfish memory that lead us to trump 2.0. People forget how inneffective Obama was at fighting right wing narratives and how inneffective he was at pushing for the policies he campaigned on.
  Over time people's memories of Obama have been more nostalgia for the times rather than an honest assessment of his actions. People forget that if he had given half the effort to shutting down guantamano bay that trump has to destroying the department of education we'd be looking at a very different calculus of executive power.

you mean someone on his yacht started a bs profile.
- Ah yes, notable for codifying and expanding Bush's drone war and then... somehow getting a Peace Prize for that?
  Also, we can literally blame the rise and prominence of Tom Homan on Obama. So should be still really be cheering for Obama at all, ever?
  Can we fuck off with this pretending that these fucks didn't enable the situation we're now literally in? How could we expect our government to go after Trumps crimes when Obama said "we need to look forward, not backward" in respect to going after war crimes?
  Further, can we stop pretending that one corporate social media is better than another corporate social media. Jay Graber talks good game, but so did Zuckerberg, Musk, and Dorsey before they got their billions. You're just building another billionaire who will turn on you.
  Reminder, Bluesky owes literally millions to Blockchain Capital, a venture capital firm. They will have to pay that money back somehow. The enshittification will happen. And I'm sick of the weak loser excuse "We will just move to another shitty corporation with another shitty corporate social media service when this one doesn't work out." Cool, and you'll mint more billionaires each time, you jabronis.
  That’s half the reason people use it.
  That half the reason is only for weird celebrity worshipping jackasses.
- Obama doesn't have a yacht, he visited David Geffen's yacht and the Maga media had a field day claiming Obama's got a yacht. And don't get me wrong, the ideal president would stay far away from all oligarchs and their yachts. But let's not pretend Obama's lack of enthusiasm for upending the status quo and Trump/Musk/Thiel's wholehearted attempt to replace democracy with corporate feudalism are at all comparable.
  
  Bro where the fuck you think Obama’s been the past few months? The only time he’s been seen during the fourth reich takeover of Post-Fall America was gladhanding and yucking it up side-by-side with trump at Carter’s funeral. Obama is AWOL and his absence is noticeably loud.
  
  But let's not pretend _______'s lack of enthusiasm for upending the status quo and Trump/Musk/Thiel's wholehearted attempt to replace democracy with corporate feudalism are at all comparable.
  This is something that I wish we could drill into people's thick skulls.