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

It’s a sad weekend over at Bluesky, where one of the best accounts has disappeared — although we can still hope for its resurrection.

Known as The Louvre of Bluesky, the account in question struck fear into the hearts of bad posters everywhere. While it posted commentary and jokes of its own, its most brutally funny and haunting work came in the form of screenshots capturing rogue Bluesky posts in all their unhinged glory.

It’s hard to write a proper appreciation now that the Louvre has vanished, and it’s truly impossible to create a full taxonomy of the all varieties of poster’s disease it managed to capture in the wild. Perhaps the defining characteristic of posts captured by the Louvre of Bluesky — beyond the simple failure to get a joke — was a scolding tone, along with a sense of absolute outrage that someone, somewhere might be having fun on the internet.

Maybe I’m projecting too much onto a screenshot-filled anonymous social media account, but to me, it always felt like the exact opposite of the tedious, ad nauseum complaints that Bluesky is a liberal echo chamber. This wasn’t someone who’d spent a few minutes on the site just to confirm their suspicions and write the umpteenth version of the same op-ed. Whether they loved Bluesky or hated it, whoever operated the account clearly knew the site’s darkest corners; they understood what absolute weirdos its users could be.

The account also felt, at times, like a warning — that any of us, in a moment of weakness, could post something clueless or cringe. Just knowing the Louvre of Bluesky was out there was enough to scare me (not often enough, I’m sure) into deleting a couple of dumb or obvious replies.

So where has the Louvre of Bluesky gone? In a post on Patreon, the account’s author said it would be taken down “temporarily” due to “a loser and a coward” emailing their bosses and their wife’s bosses. They added that they’re “not sure if the account will stay closed.”

It’s not much to go on. I can only hope that like the real museum, the Louvre of Bluesky will be able to reopen soon. But even if it doesn’t, its spirit will continue haunting all of us who remember we’re just a few keystrokes away from being immortalized for a bad post.