I have a self-imposed policy about not writing about major events until after they've largely concluded and I've had some distance from them to be able to reflect properly. However, I was sorely tempted to write about Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter a few months ago, when the drama was really blowing up.
Twitter and I have not had the best relationship. I've tried and mostly failed at using it in any meaningful way. I wound up following a handful of TV and movie critics, and a few interesting celebrities, who could be counted on to quickly clue me in on whatever was happening in the entertainment world, but I largely ignored the platform for long stretches at a time. It was a great place for fanart, updates on hobby drama, and occasionally more serious discourse, but I also got inundated with a lot of anxiety-inducing fear mongering and hand wringing, which I would have been better off avoiding. I absolutely understand why so many people love Twitter, and depend on Twitter to keep them informed. I, however, never really got the hang of it.
The most time I've spent on Twitter has been in these last few weeks, watching the fallout from Elon Musk's takeover and subsequent attempts to remake the platform in his own warped image. It's not so much that he made detrimental changes left and right. It's that he did it so publicly, often announcing major changes on Twitter itself. The majority of the Twitter workforce has been fired or quit. Most of the major advertisers are gone or on their way out, leading to a steep drop in revenue. Several notorious characters have had banned accounts reinstated, and various safeguards against misinformation and hate speech were removed. And if that weren't enough, Musk decided to muck around with the Twitter verification system, resulting in users briefly being able to buy verifications and impersonate whoever they wanted. Kudos to the guy who used an impersonated account to crater Eli Lilly's stock price with a tweet about free insulin.
As grumbling users have migrated to other platforms like Instagram and Mastodon (a wildly user-unfriendly site), we all seem to have reached a begrudging consensus that Twitter was, despite all of its problems, not that bad. There were always issues with content moderation and bad actors and bots, but Twitter at least made some efforts to keep the public commons civil. The site is littered with ads everywhere, but its basic function of facilitating communication among large numbers of people, quickly and securely, has endured. I used to roll my eyes whenever the newscasters would reference tweets, but now it's the status quo. Every major public figure either tweets, or is conspicuously absent. Twitter has been central to social movements and revolutions, and has built up an enviable reputation over the last fifteen years. And watching it all fall victim to another unstable billionaire's nasty ego trip has been disheartening to say the least.
Of course, social media is responsible for exacerbating all kinds of social ills, Twitter included. You really have to actively curate what you're exposed to on these platforms to get anything useful out of them, and in many contexts they do more harm than good. As I've been continually reminded, Twitter isn't remotely representative of reality, and has far more clout than it should. If there is no singular social media platform that ends up replacing Twitter, it won't really be a bad thing. There are better alternatives for everything that Twitter does, though generally with smaller user bases. As someone who has failed to use Twitter for much communication, I value it the most highly for its entertainment value. Elon Musk, if nothing else, has certainly delivered on the entertainment value over these past few months. Honestly, this fiasco may be the most important message ever conveyed via Twitter - the billionaire class is made up of wildly over-privileged narcissists and lunatics.
Oh well. Twitter wasn't built in a day and it'll be around for a long time to come, the same as Facebook and all the other sites that have seen their popularity wane and their relevance fade. I expect that Musk will get bored once he's not getting so much attention anymore and jump ship eventually. It's only exciting to watch now, because he's nosediving the company's fortunes so quickly. But will Twitter be able to regroup after that? I don't know, but it feels like its chapter of internet history is quickly drawing to a close.
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