Death Becomes Us

The so-called “Death of Twitter™” is taking longer than anticipated. It’s excruciating. But it’s funny, too, because it’s taken so long at this point that some people have forgotten how they swore they’d leave the day Elon Musk took over. And they’re still there.

In their defense, though, they did leave for platforms like Hive and Post and Mastodon (which, inexplicably, they misspelled—a lot) but have since returned to Twitter because those platforms haven’t been around as long, so they haven’t worked out the kinks in the day-to-day operation of a global social media platform. Like, Hive is run by two (or is it three?) people out of their apartment or something like that. How does that sound like the better alternative?

I tried Hive and it bored me, so I bailed. And long before Twitter was scheduled for execution, I tried out CounterSocial. It, too, bored the shit out of me. And honestly, it was just all the same people from Twitter, posting the same stuff that bored me on Twitter, so I just stopped even checking in on the app. I actually forgot I had an account, and when I remembered, I deleted it.

But The Death of Twitter would be swift and fiery, people on Twitter assured us daily. Nay, hourly. The minute Elon Musk took over, the entire thing would turn to digital dust and be carried away on a wind blown in from a Russian or Chinese bot farm that Elon Musk had vague ties to, which no one could ever really explain. People on Twitter would rail against the rest of us on Twitter: “Why are you people still here? THIS PLACE IS DEAD!1!!”

Musk was mining all our personal data. He’d turned it into a far-right cesspool. He allowed Trump back onto the platform. If we stayed, they told us on Twitter, it meant we supported Trump and far-right extremism, and everything else that they seemed to have forgotten existed on Twitter years before Elon Musk got there. Hell, many of these people themselves joined in 2009! I guess all they ever paid attention to prior to Musk’s ascension was the porn. Who knows?

The indie writing community on Twitter was especially hard hit by Musk’s purchase of Twitter. “Indie” means “self-published,” in case you were wondering. It’s easier to type than self-published, and it has a patina of respectability that calling yourself a self-published author just doesn’t. “I’m an indie author” places you among indie filmmakers and indie musicians. “I’m a self-published author” makes it sound like you know you have no talent and the only way you could ever publish a book was to do it yourself. People don’t consider an indie author as respectable as an indie filmmaker or musician, though. But I digress. I’ll return to this in a future essay, I’m sure.

On Twitter, the indie authors gnashed their teeth and rent their garments the instant the sale to Musk went through. They’d never been treated so horribly by anything or anyone in their lives. Musk was destroying their livelihoods! Couldn’t he see that? Didn’t he care? How were they going to sell their books if not on Twitter? Where would they find people to support them as creative individuals?

Mastodon seemed to be their first choice, as it was composed of various cliques where the writers from Twitter could join up with the members of their Twitter cliques. but under the guise of literary genres: this Mastodon server was for dark vampire erotica with a strong female protagonist, that one was for dark urban fantasy vampire romance with a strong female protagonist. It was immediately declared better than Twitter ever was, and there was a mass exodus of indie authors from Twitter. This was followed by people bemoaning the loss of all their favorite tweeps, which was something else they could blame Musk for.

Another group affected by the sale appears to be Gay Twitter. They were like rats leaving a sinking ship, with heartfelt tweets where they shared their handles from other social media platforms and beseeched their mutuals to find them there “when Twitter goes down.” That was one sentiment shared by both gays and writers: Twitter was going down—not if, but when. It was just a matter of time. We’d be typing out a particularly witty tweet and BLIP! No more Twitter. Ever.

Here’s the thing, though: the sale of Twitter to Musk was finalized on October 27. Two months and some change ago. Musk fired everyone and ran others off and the servers that kept Twitter running were supposed to go down. Then they didn’t. He fired the people who decided what was and wasn’t allowed on the platform and Twitter was supposed to become a three-ring circus of QAnon and Alt-Right conspiracy theorists and sedition and hatred and homophobia and transphobia and antisemitism. It would be unprecedented! We’d never seen anything like it in Twitter history!

But then… that didn’t happen, either. Twitter is still here and we’re still using it. The people calling for and prophesying its death are still using it, too. “Twitter’s days are numbered!1!!” they shriek and screech. “Find me on Mastadon!” (That misspelling is intentional, by the way—at least by me.)

Honestly, the Death of Twitter™ has been pretty enjoyable. A large number of the Outrage Trolls have left, and if they haven’t left, they’re so busy building their presence, their brand on all those other platforms that I haven’t seen them posting screed after screed against everything and everyone they don’t endorse. The Morality Gays all went back to Tumblr because porn is allowed there again. I’ve muted all the annoying people who are left and I’ve muted all the words I don’t want to see tweeted ad nauseum by all the attention-starved wannabe influencers.

I saw a dip in my follower count at first, but I’ve now gained followers. I post nonsense and people respond to it and I laugh a lot more than I did when everything was desperate “Buy my book!” or 24/7 “RESIST!1!!” retweets of someone else’s retweet of some journalist’s retweet of a politician’s retweet of something someone else said in an interview on Fox News or MSNBC or The View. There are one or two people I actually wish hadn’t left, but I also keep in mind that I’m pretty easy to find online and if they were interested in keeping in touch with me, they can reach out. I certainly don’t want to offend them, and since I don’t know exactly why they left, I’ll stay in my lane. Like, maybe it was some other reason that happened to coincide with Musk’s “takeover” of Twitter.

Here’s what else I do to make my Twitter experience enjoyable: I mute people, I block politicians, and I mute words and phrases I don’t want to see a gazillion times a day. I also turn off retweets from all but a select few people who actually share interesting content. The rest of the shit people retweet on Twitter is thinly veiled attempts to get famous people to follow them back and like them and be friends with them. And I did all these things long before Elon Musk showed up. The tools have been there all along and it baffles me that people don’t make use of them. (Also, no, this will not turn into a Twitter tutorial. Watch a YouTube video or something. Hell, I figured it all out on my own because I was sick of seeing the same boring shit ad nauseum. You can do it. I believe in you.)

So, the Death of Twitter™ has proven to be as long and drawn out as the first fourteen hours of Eyes Wide Shut. And it makes about as much sense, too. But I’ll take it over all those half-ass social media platforms any day of the week.