Why Bluesky’s Starter Packs Are Both Brilliant and Terrible

The Matthew Effect was first coined by sociologists Robert K. Merton and Harriet Zuckerman in 1968, who noticed that eminent scientists tended to get disproportionate credit for collaborative research compared to their less-well-known colleagues.

The same paper would get more attention if a famous name was on it, even if their contribution was identical to a case where an unknown researcher did the work.

In his analysis, Merton pointed to the Gospel of Matthew’s observation about the rich getting richer as a perfect encapsulation of how social systems tend to compound initial advantages.

This principle shows up everywhere once you start looking for it: bestseller lists drive more sales to already-bestselling books, wealthy people get better interest rates which helps them accumulate more wealth, and popular kids in school find it easier to make even more friends. Initial advantages don’t just add up — they multiply.

These starter packs create a sort of digital primogeniture — the medieval practice where the firstborn son inherited everything. Except instead of land and titles, we’re passing down attention and influence. The same people who were best positioned to capture attention during Twitter’s key growth phase are now first in line to capture mindshare on Bluesky.

This is why the Matthew Effect on social platforms is potentially even more powerful than the biblical version. It’s not just that the rich get richer — it’s that the rich get better at getting richer, while simultaneously making it harder for anyone else to get rich at all.