The problem of constantly wanting to be liked is that you will likely end up hated.
Much has been made of Elon Musk’s bizarre rant in which he told advertisers to “go fuck themselves” after they began leaving X/Twitter over extremist content and Musk’s own antisemitic ramblings (not enough has been made of the fact that he also called his interviewer Jonathan. Man’s name is Andrew).
Some people have suggested Musk’s abusing ketamine. Others insist this is a bold strategy. Others pointed out that this is simply what too much money does to a person, in the end.
We often forget, of course, the very nature of the platform that Musk famously bought for far too much than it was worth. The thing about Twitter (X just doesn’t feel right in light of its owner’s instability and gritty 90s-style app avatar) is that it has always amplified our own worst fears about ourselves. It elevates and then it wounds people who crave approval. It provides the illusion of friendship and camaraderie, and then it destroys the illusion, often in very public and dramatic ways.
Twitter has had a big impact on my own career and personal life. It has helped me get cool bylines (including here) and recognition. It has allowed me to meet and in some cases befriend (sometimes even date) awesome people. But even with all that, I focus mostly on the negative — the lying asshole I met in DMs, the moments people I thought knew me turned on me — because Twitter has always trafficked in negativity and sarcasm and self-deprecation and, let’s face it, craziness.
It was made for epic unmakings of the myths we’d like to believe about ourselves. And it was made in such a way as to make the lows seem more profound than the highs.
A man who craves approval as nakedly as Musk does — I imagine his wealthy weirdo of a father has a lot to do with that — was always going to be ground up by the furies of Twitter if he bought it. That’s because buying it = taking it seriously. Taking it seriously = becoming trapped.
Ultimately, Musk’s personal problems loom too large as a utility once very useful for breaking news has been systematically destroyed by him as he struggles in his trap. The eccentricities of the super rich are entertaining, but it’s harmful to let them distract us from real-world problems, and Twitter is a problem.
Search for any newsworthy topic and the top of the feed is dominated by shady people whom Musk allows to profit from disinformation. Even opening the app randomly, without having searched for hateful content (and I would know, I keep track of my in-app searches), results in vile racist and antisemitic conspiracies prominently in my view.
If you report the hateful content, 9 times out of 10 you’re told that Twitter has no problem with a user named SexyHitler1488 or whatever. Why on Earth would Disney want to advertise on this platform?
The Leviathan of Twitter may have swallowed Musk whole, but it may not be able to spit him out. Maybe this is how the Leviathan dies after all. Using Twitter for clicks and fleeting online fame has always been a Faustian bargain, and the payment’s due.
I still do my best to engage with the platform, mostly for practical reasons, such as the need to keep pumping out information on my besieged native motherland of Ukraine, and for older readers who have a hard time migrating to new social media apps, but participation feels more precarious by the day.
At some point, I imagine, Musk will just do a Twitter Live and start reading out a bunch of users’ DMs. If he’s telling Disney and other key advertisers to go fuck themselves, then why not go all out?
Let me be the first to say that I meant most of the things I’ve said in my DMs. Sure I was sometimes petty, and wrong, but at the end of the day, we’re all just people, and the greatest conceit of Twitter has been revealing how our humanity is at odds with the social media age to begin with.
When the ship goes down, let it be spectacular and messy, as befitting a spectacular and messy online phenomenon.
Image: Daniel Oberhaus
