Not really. You’re strongly funnelled down the bluesky owned instance, most uses of ATProto are more or less mere plugins for that main instance. Can I migrate my account to another instance? Unclear.

The VC funding also adds another layer that implies they’re going to trap people into their monetisable market share sooner or later. This seems incompatible with fediverse principles.

So while they present themselves as a more technically refined iteration of the fediverse, the whole thing is a big trap. Enjoy it while it lasts would be my advice, but if you’ve got the sway then try to get those close to you to migrate to mastodon before it goes wrong.

The unfortunate reality is that most jobs linked to humanities are considered “passion jobs” for which there are more applicants than openings by a wide margin. If you don’t have connections that gives you an edge, you’re likely being crowded out by those who do.

This is probably not helped at all by AI/LLM buzz meaning firms are increasingly seeking to automate roles associated with language processing of whatever kind.

So suggestions might be: Widen your net: consider roles like administration, HR, paralegal etc. which generally go to educated people but don’t have specific academic subject requirements.

Retrain in something in demand like a trade, healthcare assistant or similar.

Attempt to leverage your language skills to present yourself as a “prompt engineer”, lean into the AI hype to land a job.

To a large extent people are just the products of their surroundings. Doing the default thing is an energy saving technique, as well as something which people do to prevent being ostracised by their peers. If you’re able to break that in some small way, you’re still doing better than most.

If you want to do more, I guess you have to interrogate why you’re not doing more. Is it fear of rejection? Fear of failure? Lack of time, energy or resources? Dependency on e.g. cars? Lack of confidence in your actions?

They’re all going to bluesky because for some reason as soon as social media gets involved, the wonderful human ability to pattern match just gets switched off.