Let Twitter Sink Into the Sea: #riptwitter

At the moment I am watching everyone talk about how the social media network Twitter, bought recently by billionaire Elon Musk for 44 billion dollars, is supposedly going under. Long unprofitable, Twitter with its new owner is firing employees and urging those who remain to work harder – and many Twitter employees are quitting, too. Last night they claimed to have locked all the doors to the main Twitter building and entrance was highly restricted. The company seems to be in crisis.

Twitter has long since had an outsized influence on American elite culture. It does not have that many members compared to Snapchat or TikTok or Facebook/Instagram or Google/YouTube – but there are many journalists, activists, politicians, etc. who are active on it. Twitter is where they post and talk to each other. So it is important to a relatively narrow slice of American culture, but it is the part of America that deals with opinion forming and social norms. Twitter is where Donald Trump and the alt Right stirred shit up. It is where “cancel culture” of the progressive Left centers its “call out campaigns” for “accountability.” Twitter tends to be a sewer, bringing out the worst in people. I am hardly the first person to notice this.

That is why I walked away from Twitter some four and a half years ago. It was a cesspool, in my opinion. Twitter as a communications medium was this way structurally and by design, and it would not change. Being the combative area of American culture wars where people were mean to each other, I did not want that in my life. So I walked away. I remember a former student criticizing me for doing so. He claimed I was walking away from the technology America used to have its conversations, for better or for worse. Maybe. But I did not want Twitter in my life. If American political life was going to resemble a gladiator contest of cultural combat via 146-character posts, it could do so without me. I would sit this one out.

Well, here we are seven years later and some say Twitter is said to be on the verge of going down à la RMS Titanic. I suspect these fears are overblown, and we shall see what happens, but still there are those mourning a possible end of the Twitter social media platform. Check this out –

– Sherrilyn will mourn Twitter, in a near hysterical style, which is typical of her political station.

As for me, I will feel nothing if Twitter goes under.

No, I will not mourn the sinking of Twitter social media platform to the bottom of the ocean Titantic-style. I am not very consciously NOT sailing on the good ship Twitter, so I have nothing to lose by its flailing, or even failing.

Good riddance, Twitter.

American life will be better without it.

Sink to the bottom of the ocean.

Maybe we should applaud its end.

My webpage was extant before Twitter (or social media, generally) and it will be around after it is gone. It serves the ends it was designed for (link to summer article). I will consciously craft my intellectual and spiritual life in a way which serves positive and healthy ends, and that means no Twitter in my life. 

My fellow Americans: Is Twitter a means to a healthy end for you? Does it enrich and make your life better and more meaningful? Or not?

Why are you on Twitter?

Would you mourn its demise?

Or would you be healthier without it?

#riptwitter