An Ode to Twitter

I came to Twitter quite late.  I had largely eschewed it, mostly because I didn't really like Facebook and because most of my friends were not on Twitter.  I joined in March 2015, and I have to assume that was related in some fashion to my blog (I don't exactly remember).  I wanted to promote the blog, gain more readership, and I figured since I don't talk about the blog very often to coworkers or on my other social media (then Facebook), this was a way to do it.  If memory served, I also joined Tumblr at the time, hated it, and quickly left.  But Twitter, Twitter became addictive in a way I didn't really comprehend right away over seven years ago.

Twitter is a strange place and unlike any other social media.  While I have followed celebrity accounts & strangers on Facebook & Instagram (I no longer have the former, I still have but rarely lose the latter), it's not the main point.  The goal is to keep tabs on people you know, either whom you know every day or whom you used to know & this is you're way of "staying connected."  Twitter, though...Twitter was different because it forced you to go out and find your own friend groups.  In a lot of ways it felt like college, joining new cliques (Film Twitter, Gay Twitter, Elections Twitter) where the people spoke the language of your own hobbies, of your own world.

It also became addictive, and not always in a good way.  I would, in the years that follow, become something of a self-identified Twitter addict.  There is not a day that goes by where I don't check it, usually repeatedly, a quick touchbase to see what's new in the different accounts & news that I follow.  I am generally bored by cable news, and while I find well-written journalism to be absorbing, it can be daunting.  But with Twitter you can cultivate your own cable news station.  You can put only people that you want to see.  My Twitter feed consists of near constant elections analysis, Oscar discussions, & a cavalcade of attractive men (how are there so many attractive men on Twitter?)...it's like you craft your own brand of cocaine.

I will admit that as a cis white man with a small following, I don't endure a lot of the more toxic elements of Twitter.  I make a point of not hate-following anyone, and of liberally using the block button (and being mindful of not going into the replies too often for people who might profess something that would be easily countered), so I don't have as much of an interaction with those elements...but I know they're there.  I see, increasingly in the Trump Era, people posting things they know not to be true, and it can be particularly frustrating to see misinformation start to shape people's world views (for example, the 2022 election that we are going to be watching tonight is partially hard-to-read because the data is so easy to alter or skew).

But Twitter is the only social media that genuinely, truly means something to me.  It's not just that it's filled with content that I endlessly find entertaining-it's also a place where I've met real friends.  After staying out of the DM's for the first couple of years, I started to message people.  I made friends in Chicago & Arizona & Kansas City & all the way into Lyon, France, who stopped being just accounts and became real, integral parts of my life.  Some of them I've made the transition to meeting in person!  Particularly in 2020, Twitter and these friendships got me through.  When you associate a social media as the platform to interact with actual human beings, people you care about, it becomes as important to your phone as texting.

Which is why Elon Musk's destruction of the app makes me sad.  2022 has been a year where things I love or am passionate about have faltered a lot.  I have watched as movie theaters, my one true place-of-peace, have continually struggled to justify their existence.  I'm scared but prepared for the Democratic Party to lose both houses of Congress tonight, likely with the most toxic Republican caucus in the nation's history.  Inflation has impacted us all, and I'm no exception, cancelling or delaying travel, one of the few things that relaxes me, so that I am not living paycheck-to-paycheck.  Twitter coming to a crash, one of the building blocks of my relatively isolated world, is genuinely scary.

I don't know how long Twitter will last, either with me on it (I'm still debating my next move) or in the state that I have come to know & love it (i.e. how many of the people who make the app "My Twitter" will still be fixtures on it going forward).  Musk's changes seem less intent on helping make the app profitable and more as a vanity project for him to "own" the liberals who mock his narcissistic tendencies (he has already picked high-profile fights with celebrities as varied as Kathy Griffin & Hank Green).  It seems clear that Twitter is more valuable to him destroyed than as a functioning business, given it is inarguably the most valuable tool for journalism & checking power (a topic for a different day, but Twitter is by-far the most important social media, and perhaps the most important private company in history in ensuring that democracy & free speech are protected).  This is far more important than what I end up spending a few hours of my day doing, obviously, but this is a personal blog so I wanted to share that this has made me feel a bit of unrest.  Particularly given how just a few days of Musk being in charge have caused the app to feel chaotic, full of naval-gazing & increasing vitriol (that could be its proximity to the election, which is its own bag of horrors), I don't see how it doesn't implode if an adult doesn't enter the room soon.  And I will be sad when that happens-I love Twitter, for all of its faults, and I can't quite grasp anymore what my life would be without it.