Flail Wail

People used to invite me to speak about Twitter at conferences. I got job offers and crazy opportunities because I was—am?—good at Twitter. Not only did Twitter grow my career as a writer, but it also introduced me to people with whom I have deep, lasting friendships. Twitter has been an instrumental cornerstone of my social life since, oh, I hate to admit this, 2008. That’s a long time in internet years.

“How’d you get all those followers?”

That was the top question at writer and blogger conferences where I’d inevitably be asked to sit on a panel about Twitter.

“I… don’t know? I just post about stuff I find interesting and follow people who are talking about things I want to know about, that’s it for my strategy. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. Social media is… social. Be social, I guess?

You can buy followers and likes. You can use rage bait, retweeting the offensive or racist to grab attention—the “can you believe this shit” school of posting. You can join a Twitter pod with a group that has made a handshake deal to like, comment, and/or retweet your posts at an agreed-upon interval, making it look like you have engagement when really, that engagement was in the back channel with people who also want to appear as though they have engagement. There are coattails tactics; you can retweet or try to interact with those with larger followings in hopes they’ll answer, sort of the Twitter equivalent of getting that late-night talk show guest seat.

The audiences I spoke with wanted to acquire Twitter followers because of the potential rewards. They saw Twitter’s primary use as a marketing platform for their “personal brands” (a phrase I have always hated) in travel. Your follower count would bestow upon you a perceived value. You could be sent to a location and paid to tweet about it. You could become a “brand ambassador” and receive a ton of low- or high-end merch in exchange for telling your followers why that stuff is great. You could hope to gain the attention of other platforms monitoring Twitter—television, radio, podcasts, publishers—and maybe land the opportunity to bring your 140-character, no, 280-character wit to the world.

The Twitter I remember from 2008 was a venue for … let’s call it brief observational humor. Then 2010-2011 brought the Arab Spring, an uprising in which Twitter was instrumental in both local activism and sharing information with the world. My memory is that something shifted here, we saw the power of Twitter to make shit happen, it was no longer a place where you posted “Met a dominatrix on the train to Portland, she told me where the best bakery is; about to make this pastry my bitch.” I mean, you could still post that kind of stuff but Twitter was the wires, now, too, a place where you could find out about Important Things. (True story, by the way.)

Around 2014, Gamergate set up Twitter as a platform for sexist and racist harassment, for the distribution of conspiracy theories and disinformation, for grifts and snake oil. I’ve kept my feed tightly pruned, blocking and muting at even the most minor annoyances. I was physically threatened by a known troll for about a week some years back—I consider this getting off easy compared to what other folks I know have experienced. Mostly, I got called mean or told to stop talking about certain things which… just unfollow me, bro, you have the power. I digress, what I meant to say was that the Arab Spring showed us Twitter’s real power for distribution and maybe that’s what changed it, what made it a place for more than a very short story about a woman about to punish a Koign Aman. Gamergate and subsequent initiatives exploited that newly found platform power to abuse, silence, and misinform millions.

I have tried several times to quit social media, failing miserably at every effort. I am addicted, sure, sure, but also, I have benefited in meaningful ways. I got my book deal via Twitter. I met the woman I’m working with on the screenplay from said book via Twitter. And in a less career-focused example, when I fell into that dark depression, my social media friends not only knew there was something wrong before I did, but the support they gave me—have I thanked you? I can’t remember if I thanked you because so many people were so kind and I lost track of who to thank. It was everything to me. It still is.

For a while, I lived upstairs in a divided 1914 home. I had an excellent neighbor; he bought the downstairs unit one week before I did and we were a sympathetic match. (Doug, if you are reading, I hope you’re well.) He sold and the guy who moved in was the most entitled, self-centered, and goddammit, loud person. He lived in the house as though he owned the entire space, he was inconsiderate in ways small and large, and he ruined that place for me. I tried to make it work, but zebra, stripes, etc, and eventually, I moved. It was hard. I loved living there, how do you strike a deal with that sort of narcissist? You don’t.

Twitter’s new overlord is probably disinterested in my stories of modestly successful career connections or the less measurable but still very real community support I received while in the company of the black dog. The Twitter purchase feels to me like the ultimate answer to the “How do I get followers?” question. You plunk down $44 billion and buy the entire platform. I get lawful evil vibes off the whole thing—I make the rules, I will use them to destroy anyone who disagrees, and bonus, I get a lot of attention in the process. There’s a hefty helping of leftover Silicon Valley meets Ayn Rand libertarianism meets prosperity gospel thinking too. It puts money in my pocket therefore it is good. Social platforms have long dragged their feet on removing disinformation and racism because it has been profitable.

It’s easy for me to not shop at Hobby Lobby, the craft store that’s not only deeply anti-choice but was also (weirdly) involved in stealing antiquities from Iran. There’s no store in my area. It’s easy for me to cut down on fuel consumption. I work at home, I like riding my bike. It’s less easy for me to drop Twitter because a toxic new neighbor is influencing what my day-to-day existence in my social media home looks like. That guy is blasting some Ye tribute band at 11 pm, he’s left the back gate open and now the garden is full of white supremacists thinking they can spraypaint swastikas on the house. It’s my social media home and moving requires me to sacrifice things not so easily released.

I have opened a Mastadon profile, though I have been on social media long enough to remember that we have been here before — I also have Peach and ‘ello profiles out there in the socialverse. I hope it comes to nothing, that once the new neighbor has moved in, he realizes that he has a community responsibility, he will close the gate to the shared spaces, he will wear headphones when he blasts the Ted Nugent. I’m not optimistic right now; there is no accommodation when your neighbor not only can not distinguish between your story about a woman in a leather corset telling you where to get carbs at the end of the train ride and a guy waving a confederate flag while blaming the Jews for Ye’s canceled contracts. Not only can your neighbor not see the difference, but he also is absolutely not interested in learning. It benefits him to not learn.

It’s probably easy to make fun of people like me, turning themselves inside out over Twitter’s new owner. I’m not special, I assure you there are lots of people out there who feel just like me about this change. The environment might be virtual, but the feeling of loss is all too real. Twitter has been our home. There goes the neighborhood?

I hope not.