RIP Twitter
Don't expect me to cry, for all the reasons you had to die.
Yesterday, Elon Musk killed Twitter.
It’s called X now, nobody knows if they’re still tweeting or X’ing or whatever, the new logo 𝕏 "is a generic Unicode character known as ‘mathematical double-struck capital X’" set in Special Alphabet 4 from Monotype, it’s also a line of code \mathbb{X} but i have no idea what that means — and to the delight of everyone it turned out that both Microsoft and Meta hold trademarks for the use of "X" for interactive services, which is just hilarious and a certain source of fun in the future adventures of the billionaire clown show.
Musk also removed the Twitter sign from it’s headquaters, with the police watching on and confirming "that no crime was committed, and this incident was not a police matter". The Bird is no more.
Me and Twitter, we have history.
You see, my current account isn’t my first one. With my old account for my back-then-blog that had some 12k followers, which i operated since 2007, i had some of the weirdest, most experimental, most hilarious and outrageous experiences of my online life.
I transcribed the full audio version of the fairytale of “Ali Baba and the 40 thieves“ on Twitter in a two-hours-session to the delight of the ten people or so who read it; I got drunk on the weekend ranting for days about the state of online media accompanied by musivideos; i had access to the DM-chat of the largest organized troll-group in germany leading to invaluable insights; I made tons of friends there; I initiated viral campaigns there — and I completely lost my mind on the Tweeties.
In November 22, Jaron Lanier writing in the New York Times coined the term “Twitter Poisoning“, and he nailed the addictive mechanisms of the platform and the narcissistic effect it has on all kinds of groups and individuals, including yours truly.
I believe “Twitter poisoning” is a real thing. It is a side effect that appears when people are acting under an algorithmic system that is designed to engage them to the max. It’s a symptom of being part of a behavior-modification scheme.
The same could be said about any number of other figures, including on the left. Examples are found in the excesses of cancel culture and joyless orthodoxies in fandom, in vain attention competitions and senseless online bullying. (…)
The human brain did not evolve to handle modern chemicals or modern media technology and is vulnerable to addiction. That is true for me and for us all.
Behavioral changes occur as a side effect of something called operant conditioning, which is the underlying mechanism of social media addiction. This is the core mechanism analogous to the role alcohol plays in alcoholism. (…)
Twitter poisoning is a little like alcoholism or gambling addiction, in that the afflicted lose all sense of proportion about their own powers. They can come to believe they have almost supernatural abilities. Little boys fantasize about energy beams shooting from their fingertips.
The degree of narcissism becomes almost absolute. Everything is about what someone else thinks of you.
I know that feel, I’ve been there, poisoned by and drunk on the highly effective hormone manipulation you can do to yourself on that platform since 2010, until i stopped drinking alcohol some years ago.
I regularly got my kicks on Twitter by posting myself into an outrage frenzy, sometimes firing hundreds of tweets into the noosphere within a few hours, occasionally going on for days and whole weekends, both to the entertainment and befuddling of friends and colleagues and a live audience, some of whom got the in-jokes and understood the rage i threw at everything that was wrong with online life or the world or myself or all of them together.
But most people just thought I’m crazy. While I enjoyed my bath in sweet hormone-shots of oxytocin and dopamine, when likes and retweets rolled in, many people just thought the same about me as Jaron Lanier does of Musk, Kanye and Trump: The guy is Twitter-poisoned. (Which, to be fair, was apt for my kind of blog: a punk-eccentric and eclectic mixture of weird and bizarre stuff, some philosophy bits and larger pieces about webculture, some politics, experimental design and tech, and a lot of music and entertainment for a good measure. My old Twitter account was basically the same, just louder — until i was too loud for some good reasons we shall not talk about.)
Twitter was, and maybe still is under it’s new moniker, the closest we have to a realtime window into the collective consciousness, but warped and distorted by the effects of attention economics and algorithms. In cases of collective outrage the swarm on Twitter pretty much always behaved like that drunk uncle throwing a fit at every- and anything.
Only on Twitter you could really witness the shifting and changing attention focus of the (mostly western) human crowd, the rippless of viral cascades, the vibing of the swarm. This is a quality that no other platform ever achieved,, distorted as it may have been, and maybe it’s a good thing that Musk is dismantling the platform in his eratic improv way that is so, so appropriate to the behavior of the Twitter-swarm on display.
It’s a mad mad mad mad world in which a fool plays king, himself also twitter-poisoned to the max, for the enjoyment and delight of his stans.
I’m not a guy who will publicly announce to leave the platform for this or that reason just to return a day later. Here’s my Twitter X-account and I’ll continue to use it, because there simply is no real alternative (yet), if you want to engage in near-realtime with the swarm.
So, here’s to the old times: Nirvana having an Aneurysm live at Reading, for those who know.
Come on over, do the twist, aha
Overdo it and have a fit, aha
Love you so much, it makes me sick, aha
Come on over and do the twist, aha