People have been saying they were gonna leave Twitter for a super long time, in the same way they often claim they're going to move to Canada, and with roughly the same level of success. I'm not trying to say they're dumb liars; full synchronicity with our personal ethics requires a nearly cosmic level of effort, and in my experience always comes with painful sacrifice, which is why most people are content merely to describe this wicked gulf in others. But it actually seems to be happening, this time. There is a sundering of sorts, the kind of thing you would read in the Silmarillion. At least, I think. I've never read it. But it's still true: BlueSky and Threads are now functional, catalyzed venues for discourse with varying levels or intentions to Federate. Federation is sort of a sophisticated concept to explain, but it might be reasonable here to say that it is an orthogonal philosophy to the Internet as it works now. Another way of saying it: Federation has ideas in common with the Internet that was stolen from us.
Dunking on Elon Musk is so commonplace as to barely warrant it. He exists in a perpetual state of dunking and being dunked on; he whirls in place. A wealthy scion turned supervillain by social opprobrium, even his whims are so substantial as to have physical heft. So if he says he wants to buy Hasbro because of Woke D&D, the stock goes up two percent. I grew up as a partisan in culture war; as an evangelical in my younger teens, I was as annoying as you might imagine. Having emerged from these trenches, the main thing it impressed upon me was that culture warriors aren't to be trusted. We don't actually need an Elon Musk to revert to the old ways. Those games still exist. I can see them from the chair I'm typing in now. I own them. Don't you?
Broadly speaking, if something I do does not resonate, I tend to look within. But corporate internets like Twitter don't function organically. What delights me about a shared space is that I can share the shiny rocks and cool sticks I found in the woods. Metaphorically speaking, but also as a literal. People have long suspected that links are deboosted, curtailed, imprisoned. A few days ago, Musk essentially confirmed it - suggesting that you put the link in a separate reply to your own post, to avoid "lazy linking." What? I don't have any idea what the fuck that means. The whole reason I go there is to show off my rocks and sticks, and to see the rocks and sticks of others. This is a matter apart from being verified, which used to involve proving you were who you said you were, and now involves paying Twitter money so your posts are visible to others. I have a BlueSky account that I use to make new friends and tell people about the stuff we're doing, and at a fraction of the follower count the quote unquote Engagement is the same or better. Leaving Twitter would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. But that is a weird, weird data point.
It's a stupid version of the Internet. They've essentially codified being paid in exposure, capturing a variety of statistics and twinkling little lights and symbols at you in exchange for your labor. They are conjurors of cheap tricks. I suppose you could always just come to the site.
(CW)TB out.
