(Photos: Wikimedia Commons/MarcusObal; Flickr/Marcel Grabowski.)
I joined Twitter dot com in August 2013, 11 years ago. I did it, I think, to see SethBling’s tweets. (His account is the one that appears at the very beginning of my following list.) Other accounts I followed early on: Dinnerbone and Jeb; Element Animation; Salted from CraftedMovie; SimplySarc, Etho, and Panda4994. Minecrafters.
Twitter wasn’t new. It was, by the time I joined, seven years old. By contrast, I had joined Instagram about a year after it launched. But Twitter was amazing. This was a nascent form of communication. As I mentioned in my first blog post, I loved it because it brought the world’s people together in such a novel and useful way.
I made friends on Twitter, I followed breaking news on Twitter, I engaged with things gone bonkers viral, I read the pithy thoughts of people I was interested in. I also tweeted a lot—but by no means was I as prolific as some.
I felt like it was my site, for me. For years, no other app gave me access to be social with others such that Twitter did. Discord came in later, but Twitter was out in the open.
But today as it stands, rebranded as ‘X’ because of Elon Musk, the situation is untenable. You can pretend that everything’s OK by putting on blinders. You can pretend that the “PUSSY IN BIO” spam bots don’t exist, much like Musk does. You can pretend that the artificially-boosted top replies are interesting and insightful. And you can pretend that the owner isn’t far-right like the New York Times does.
But at some point things should weather on you. Spam bots are everywhere without moderation. Blue checkmarks have among the most drivel of comments, which people pay the company to show at the top of replies. The owner frequently tweets, retweets, and likes racist, xenophobic, transphobic, and far-right things.
It’s no longer fun. It may not have been fun for a while, but at least then Twitter’s utility outweighed its toxicity. Elon Musk’s ‘X’ tipped the scale. And as a result, I checked out. I left months ago, and I suggest now is a time for you do too.
I remember the day that Musk finalized the bid for the takeover of Twitter. I was taking a New York City commuter train past midnight, days before Halloween. I had my laptop with me, and I learned, with dread, the news. The Twitter, Inc. board accepted Musk’s bid.
I didn’t think the ordeal would last. I predicted that a Twitter under Elon Musk would collapse really quickly and so thoroughly that there would be no more Twitter at all. It’s still here, as X. I was wrong, yet at the time it seemed like nothing could withstand Musk’s series of layoffs, cost- and corner-cutting, and his erratic behavior. The site publicly struggled with a series of outages that did not inspire confidence in the ship being able to right itself.
It was incredibly depressing to watch Twitter change from a microblogging site that faced moderation dilemmas to ‘X’, a site which wants to be a blogging platform, and a video-streaming platform, and a haven for Nazis, fascists, and Christian nationalists.
Despite the challenges of losing employees and pivoting to ventures already monopolized by others, ‘X’ is still around because people don’t think it’s bad enough to leave. The bad does not outweigh the good.
I wanted to write this because Elon Musk keeps digging into new lows, like recently stoking race riots in the UK. It’s clear from his past tweets that he has a revulsion towards immigrants. He replies to tweets that espouse awful and hateful—and usually factually wrong—ideas. Musk doesn’t care to care about having plausible deniability, and goes straight to “You have said the actual truth” about the Jews. (If he didn’t want to appear associated with Nazis and fascists, he could, uh, put effort into not going near them!)
The other reason for writing this was because of Zoe Schiffer’s book, Extremely Hardcore, which had a book signing event in New York City in the spring. It was called “Twitter Funeral”. And I agree. Twitter died with Musk.
Twitter is not Twitter anymore. It is no longer the place where people espousing hate are kicked off. It’s Elon Musk’s ‘X’, which welcomes them with open arms. It’s appropriate to make a distinction between what it was before and after the takeover. One faced challenges, the other is a place of depravity.
If you’re on Twitter still, I beg of you: leave. Go to Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads (in that order). Each has its own core audience, but they’re all unwelcoming to Nazis. I struggled to pick up and leave, but I did it. Very large accounts have jumped ship, and you can too. Find the same people you follow on Twitter, and find others in your niche. I promise you’re likely to find people. After all, the internet is just five websites all posting screenshots of the other four.
If you have a capital-A Audience, you should already have multiple venues of communication, e.g. a Discord server or a YouTube channel that you can post announcements to. Hell, you probably have a website, which is yours and yours alone.
Do what I did: cross-post for a few months, then spend more and more time on the other app (Bluesky for me), and eventually forget to check Twitter. I sure as hell was addicted to Twitter, and it took time. But I quit it. I deleted the app off my phone.
If you’re still using it, it’s being held up in part because of you. You still provide eyeballs for advertisers. You still read and engage with others, giving them a reason to stay. The network effect is a real thing.
If you are worried that all of your stuff is there, that’s okay! I have ten years worth of screams into the void, and I’m okay with keeping my account up and public. Take a leap of faith, and touch grass.
swinxy.me 