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Twitter Is At Death's Door, One Year After Elon Musk's Takeover
A good article at Rolling Stone about just how far this site has fallen. Even before the takeover, things weren't great: it was always the smallest of the major social networks, smaller than Facebook, than Instagram, but it had something that they didn't: cachet. Facebook's for your racist parents. Instagram's for the vain. But Twitter had the feel of smoking in your school parking lot (you know, when you could actually do that), making fun of the beautiful. News broke there first. People went there for alerts. It was the social network that felt the most like critical infrastructure. But, that was then.
As we're all aware, the site was bought by a deeply uncool loser, a guy who celebrated day one of the ownership he never wanted with a terrible visual pun (holding a sink, tweeting "let that sink in"; tragically, one of his better jokes). He proceeded to gut the site, fire most of his staff, implement a bunch of terrible ideas (purchasable blue ticks, blue ticks at the top of every thread, and now headlineless links) and abandon others (remember "we're getting rid of blocking"?). He of the desperate need to be liked. He of the inability to log off. He of the incredibly punchable face, of the pathetic, patchy little pubic beard (fellas, sorry, but if you can't grow a good one, you probably shouldn't).
I tailed off in my posting early in the year, came back for a bit, then stopped for good at the end of July. At this point all my mutuals are on Bluesky or Mastodon, plus the one at Cohost (bless you), and I've had an incredibly fulfilling year getting back to writing, rather than posting. I don't expect that's for everyone, but there are other things out there, better ways to spend one's time. I have to wonder: what's the draw? The site's just going through the motions, now. The blue ticks have, as expected, ruined everything. What was good is gone. It's not coming back. Given all that, what's keeping people there?
...it’s not my first time having an online community hollowed out by a hostile force, and there’s something to be said for making the most of the end with your remaining friends...
But your friends are elsewhere, or they should be. At this point, you're not an early adopter if you abandon your account. Your friends are out there. Pick something. Roll with it. The best times are gone, and they're not coming back. Maybe Twitter gets repo'd by Musk's debtholders, maybe it hangs on for a little longer, like GeoCities did. Only, unlike GeoCities, nothing good is going to come of the rest of this. This is the white supremacists' platform, now. This is where the hate-filled live. They post awful memes. They troll good people, feeling invincible, knowing who is in charge. And if you're a good person, it's time to realize what you're associated with. You can leave now, or when the money runs out and they turn off the lights. But one way or another, you've gotta go.