Gregory's Server
But that's a thing I haven't really talked about, because talking about it felt weirdly forbidden: I was close enough that I had direct calls with Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal. I had a direct one on one call with Parag where I thought they were going to announce I got BlueSky and instead they told me they were giving it to someone else, but maybe if the person and I got along, I could be the tech lead or something. I guess it's not surprising that I didn't get it: I decided to use my presentations as a test, and I told them exactly what I thought we should do in my usual, excited, but completely direct self... and intentionally not filtering any of that, including about what I thought the mistakes Twitter, Facebook, etc had made. So I guess it's not surprising I gave the impression that I wasn't the right person to be the public lead. That experience did lead me to decide to co-found the Spritely Institute with Randy Farmer instead.
I *will* say that I was surprised that the people who were most cool, of all the top exec folks at Twitter, of having me tell them *exactly* what I thought were Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal. They seemed entertained and were nodding along enthusiastically. A lot of the other top people seemed stunned to have this nonbinary weirdo saying all this stuff to them that was so *direct*. Or that's the read I got.
I did get the impression that both Jack and Parag genuinely cared about building BlueSky btw, that it wasn't some scheme as I think a lot of us feared. But maybe I just felt that way because they were willing to listen to me, and that they were listening at all, seemingly in earnest, was a surprise.
But it was a blessing in disguise, ultimately, because not getting BlueSky meant starting the Spritely Institute doing *exactly* what I thought we should be doing.
Damn, woulda been nice to start with all that money though. A lot less stress. Probably.
But then again, I'd probably have all the transphobes knocking down my door. The eye of Elon himself would probably be upon me. Guess I'm "lucky". Which is fucked up itself, to even think that.
But all of that makes everything I'm watching right now fill me up with a million emotions. It's great to see success. It's frightening to think that being too successful might make you a target.
There's another thing I haven't said, I think: I almost didn't transition because I *knew* I'm a prominent trans engineer, and I know what happens to prominent trans engineers. Fucked up, right?
And like, I guess it's just *weird* to see this thing I've poured myself into, killed myself over, that I've never stopped trying to figure out how to figure out how to get to the next phase, suddenly get all this attention. ESPECIALLY BECAUSE A RICH DUDE GOT UPSET AT A BAD JOKE SITE GETTING KICKED OFF FOR MAKING A TRANSPHOBIC JOKE
You wanna hear a joke? That a bunch of people who are claiming they're all for "freedom of speech" are kissing the feet of *centralization* now that it's at the end of a despot who might get away with letting them say racist, sexist, queerphobic bullshit.
Just watching all this, it's all too real. It's all too personal. It's hard to look away from.
But all of that makes everything I'm watching right now fill me up with a million emotions. It's great to see success. It's frightening to think that being too successful might make you a target.
There's another thing I haven't said, I think: I almost didn't transition because I *knew* I'm a prominent trans engineer, and I know what happens to prominent trans engineers. Fucked up, right?