I wrote this extended tweet yesterday about life on Twitter in the Musk era and like many of my recent posts it died on the vine (just a handful of notis).
Whether this is a sign the tweet just didn’t ‘do it’ for my small village of followers, or whether it’s just too esoteric to be acceptable for those of us with less available brain-pan, who can say? What I don’t accept is that the thread wouldn’t resonate with at least some who find themselves in the same predicament I’m in. I’ve pasted the thread below; the point is self-explanatory.
If you chance upon this, whatever your feelings, good or bad, I would love to know your thoughts.
In the meantime, stay brave.
Rex
1/ Twitter has roughly 400 million users. What percentage of these are low-follower accounts? And what advantages lie in maintaining (through dark algo magic) these same lower follower accts?
Spoiler Alert: I’ll begin by saying what should be obvious to everyone by now, that
2/ despite @elonmusk's recent efforts to convince us otherwise, Twitter is STILL NOT A FREE SPEECH PLATFORM. Nope. At best, Twitter is *controlled opposition,* and at worst Twitter is also controlled oppo. And to what degree it shades or swings one way or t’other is really
3/ just a matter of degrees depending on who's running things (now it’s Elon’s turn).
Not surprisingly, it's the big-time Twitter celebs (like @catturd2) who get most of the attention and help to fund the illusion that *you too can be like me* in the make-believe land of
4/ opportunity Twitter wants you to think it is; whereas, I believe it's the subterranean rank & file (the rest of us) who better personify the parameters of a dying flame ... this poor, broken world we call home.
In fact, if you’re really paying attention you'll notice that
5/ most of the popular accounts rarely go anywhere near the dangerous tip of the spear as regards posting cutting insights that flay the contrived truth down to its tainted blood and lying bones. No, these are more the *plays well with others* types whose observations are often
6/ truthful yet anemic. They have monetized brands to protect, after all. Money talks; it also tweets (I have nothing against them, there should be room for all of us). This isn't true in all cases. Some, like the freshly re-instated @Project_Veritas, like to fly a little
7/ too close to the sun on occasion, but it's less of this and more of that (the former), generally speaking.
Conversely, it’s the *now you see me, now you don't* crowd of grimy below-deckers who are more apt to throw caution to the wind and themselves into the oncoming
8/ train of fake news, disturbing facts, and false claims. And this, I believe, helps to explain why so many of us down in the engine room struggle to be heard, let alone participate in crafting an evolving narrative that actually leads somewhere. My real sense of Twitter is that
9/ the company provides a service to the Sith Lords of Population Control (half-joking) and this service keeps 400 million people from understanding how truly dire things really are and sitting on their asses as a result.
In other words, Twitter keeps its flock engaged in the
10/ fantasy of engagement (think of the images of those scary sheep going in circles), hacking its patrons via this deep horizon psyop to the point many of us can no longer discern the difference between, 'This feels like I'm doing something important!' ... to, at the end of the
11/ day ... 'Wtf is the ACTUAL benefit here?
The concrete benefits are indeed slim.
If the real purpose of Twitter WAS to liberate free speech and rouse people to THINK FOR THEMSELVES TOGETHER on their way to forging bonds of enterprise as a means of reckoning with tyrants
12/ (say, to defend against poison-jab-wielding Globalist psychopaths) then Twitter as a launch-pad for social action has failed abysmally (ditto for corrupt election reversals).
If, however, expectations are to let the free exchange of ideas merit a range of provocative
13/ discourse, then ... well, you can forget that too.
Moreover, as to low followers and the higher level lower followers, who, like them, barely break sea level, Twitter has apparently decided to leave us all behind (we're just not worth the risk), with *Ghost-banning*
14/ replacing suspension as the preferred weapon of choice.
Finally, despite Musk’s PR campaign to sell the world his new iteration — 'Twitter is Alive!’ — and whatever other nonsense foams from this faux liberty brew, don't look at his claims of reinstating the Big Dogs to make
15/ his point, look to the tens, perhaps hundreds-of-millions of users who are forced to fly under the radar and for whom *Twitter freedom* remains a goddam gilded cage.
.30.