Many people are saying Twitter is over. The best people are saying that it’s time to go to another app, whether it’s some new shit I’ve never heard of called Mastodon or our old friend Tumblr. If you’re using Twitter right now you’re probably seeing lots of people lose their collective fucking minds, and not without reason. Elon Musk, in his infinite business wisdom, sent everyone one of the funniest work emails I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot of them during my time in the email mines):
Believe it or not, the people who work for him would rather take three months of paid vacation than work long nights in whatever he envisions as “extremely hardcore”. Presumably, “extremely hardcore” Twitter 2.0 will not have anything cool like mosh pits, incredibly loud music or those guys at shows that love to spray beer all over the mosh pit. If I had to guess, it will actually suck quite a bit. Critical engineers seem to have made the same judgement call I did, and so the whole thing seems to be sinking:
It seems like it’s time to get off Mr. Bones’ wild ride. Twitter right now has the same chaotic energy that Tumblr had when Yahoo! first bought it in 2013. “Where will I go now?” the people asked. Just like now, alternatives were floated. My Tumblr 2 of choice was Peach, a microblogging site similar to Tumblr but much more bare bones. I tried to log in, but sadly I don’t remember my password because the last time I used it was probably the 10th grade. I remember it being popular for a little bit and lots of my Tumblr mutuals migrated over, but eventually I lost interest. A 2016 Bloomberg article declared that: "like a fruit at the peak of ripeness, interest in Peach softened.”
The thing is, Tumblr didn’t die. It stayed pretty much exactly the same as it had been during the Yahoo ownership, albiet quieter. Although it wasn’t my preferred social media platform, I still used it from time to time. What I found there was a strange digital serenity that didn’t exist before. Maybe it’s because all the truly insane people went to Twitter, where they discuss hot ideas like who is allowed to use Doordash. My girlfriend, who has been an avid Tumblr user during this period, put it best:
“It’s less personality driven. There’s no internet microcelebrities and I never see drama, at least in my circle of blogs that I follow. Most people seem to use it for self expression, where as Twitter, I feel like most people use it in the hopes of going viral? In that sense, Twitter to me can become very masterbatory.”
Speaking on online personas, she added that, “Tumblr doesn’t require you to be funny or share really intimate details of your life to gain followers or interact with people, it feels like Tumblr followers don’t even matter at all, since you can’t even see how many followers a blog has. Since it’s a blog…. there’s less pressure for you to have a persona. On Twitter or Instagram, it’s like ‘Okay, I need to put on this facade of how funny I am or how exciting my life is, how pretty i am, how many friends I have, because your face is on the profile it represents you and you want the best version of yourself. That’s also how everyone else uses it. On Tumblr, 'it’s like ‘Okay, no one knows who I am, I’m just a blog I can post whatever the fuck I want’ — It’s completely incapable of trying to replace social interaction in the way i feel like websites like Twitter have for some people.”
As you can read, my girlfriend is very smart. As she noted, a key thing that I think differentiates the Twitter collapse from the Tumblr exodus (aside from the fact that Tumblr wasn’t bought by a failing car manufacturer) is that Twitter, unlike Tumblr, has replaced, rather than augmented, social interactions for many. Sure, Tumblr facilitated many friendships and key moments for people, myself included. I found out I was transgender partially because of my interactions with the trans community on Tumblr — something that wasn’t readily available to me in small town Texas. I’m not alone in this — papers have been written on the way that Tumblr allowed people to explore their queerness safely in a way no other social media could come close to.
Unlike that, Twitter feels like it’s become life for some people. Whether it’s #Resistance libs weepily mourning a website or pathetic reactionaries dickriding the richest man in the world, people have begun to take Twitter entirely too seriously. The front page of the New York Times has Twitter news higher than news on the war in Ukraine. During the pandemic, Twitter usage soared. That’s fine, because where else was everyone else supposed to go? But in light of the pandemic slowly receding, it seems like the worst habits of Twitter usage have only stayed with us. Many people retreated online during one of the most traumatic global events of our collective lives, and when they found community there, they didn’t want to leave.
The problem is that “community” used to mean something different online. Online communities revolved around forums related to hyperspecific topics or niche subcultures. I used to frequent The Mystical Forest Zone, a Sonic the Hedgehog spriting and comics forum. There, I found people who were into the same games as I was and got interested in pixel art. It was my first gateway to the internet, and I loved every second of it. Forums shaped early internet culture as we know it. By comparison, modern social media throws everyone together and hopes for the best. While Twitter claims that “We believe real change starts with conversation,” it’s not actually a good place for long term discussions, and it moves with the news cycle and everyone’s general attention spans. It’s good for posting snappy, forgettable things and being the best, most ironic or self-serious version of yourself. It’s not good for sustained conversations, and it’s certainly not a substitue for real human interactions. As more and more of public life eroded due to the pandemic, people replaced lots of real community with online ones. Now, with the rugpull feeling imminent, Twitter users are wondering, much like 2013 era Tumblr users, where the fuck do I go now?
We stand before a pivotal crossroads in internet usage, where most people are genuinely unhappy with the fact that apps rule many of our lives. My terminally online friends, we have the chance of a lifetime to remake the internet in ways that stupid billionaries can only dream of. Don’t misconstrue what I’m saying here: people will stay on Twitter. Despite Elon Musk’s best efforts, Twitter at its core is still a platform hundreds of millions of people use with wealthy interests invested in keeping it afloat. It’s not going to disappear overnight, and someone may step in and course-correct the ship (In that case, I wasted an evening writing this column). I will probably still use Twitter. My hope is that as Twitter crashes, people will reevaluate what kind of community they really value. We can migrate to more community-centered platforms and learn to use social media in ways that amplify and augment friendships and comradarie rather than replace it. Perhaps most optimistically of all, maybe we can all go outside. We can all move away from this idea that posting is an extension of the self, that to be human is to partially be online. At risk of sounding like a 2010s boomer, maybe we can start to live a little bit more authentically and a little less online.
As Twitter crashes and burns, where are you heading?