Twitter is formally 20 years outdated. In one other actuality, that may make me form of nostalgic. I have been lurking and scrolling and tweeting for 16 years; most of my grownup life. There was a time when Twitter was a spot the place some web strangers grew to become my IRL associates, after I was excited to “live-tweet”. When my infinitely extra well-adjusted associates would ship me memes, I might smugly say “I noticed that on Twitter days in the past.”
Twitter stopped being that place a very long time in the past, however I haven’t got any nostalgia for it. I do not actually really feel something in any respect, really.
As a result of I can already hear the feedback: Sure, I am nonetheless on X. I do not spend as a lot time there as I did a decade in the past, but it surely’s nonetheless various time, an unhealthy quantity, if I am being sincere. My job is to report on social media firms, so I preserve (doom)scrolling. That is what I inform myself anyway.
A number of of my favourite posters are nonetheless round. Dril’s nonetheless acquired it. The memes are nonetheless, often, good, though X’s suggestion algorithm appears to favor pointing me towards countless AI slop, boring scorching takes from thirsty mid-tier tech execs and blatant engagement bait. X’s algorithm — what little we are able to study it, anyway — now depends on Grok’s predictions about what you will like.The identical Holocaust-loving Grok that has spewed racism and referred to itself as MechaHitler and declared Elon Musk “the one best particular person in fashionable historical past.” The identical Grok that allegedly generated 1000’s of photos of kid abuse materials. Hey @grok is that true?
X shouldn’t be Twitter but it surely’s additionally not not-Twitter. Final 12 months, an internet market startup purchased the 560-pound Twitter chicken that when adorned the corporate’s San Francisco workplace and blew it up in a Nevada desert surrounded by Tesla CyberTrucks as a part of an elaborate publicity stunt. Dumb? Sure. But in addition a in some way becoming adieu for “Larry.”
It has been 20 years since Jack Dorsey despatched the first-ever tweet, which was by no means even a very good tweet anyway. It has been 5 years, by the best way, since he turned that tweet into an NFT (keep in mind NFTs??) and auctioned it for almost $3 million. It is now functionally nugatory. One other chapter in Dorsey’s complicated, difficult legacy.
