Why Twitter is so Dead.

Well, maybe I just mean ‘Muslim Twitter’, what ever that is.

It’s no secret the platform isn’t what it used to be. A decrepit clown crawling along the pavement as it dies from old age and bad puns, we’re prodding at its lifeless corpse for one more cheap laugh, possibly a selfie.

Some of us have now come to accept that the jester is dead. Years of heavy substance abuse have rendered him incapable of being funny. Now we’re grown up, smoking pipes and passing around halal haribo, wondering what went wrong.

Firstly, of course, there are only so many ways for a clown to fold a balloon. Everything to be said in 140 characters has been said. Jokes about how white people are scared of your beard, having four wives, your foot in the sink, and how your dad beat you with nunchucks have all been made. The unique cultural experiences that make us different have been noted. We’ve made the buzzfeed article. We’ve expressed our outrage and channeled it into a satirical hashtag. We all have that one pinned tweet that somehow ‘banged.’ Perhaps that’s all there was to us?

Then of course we must blame the youth. Following the pioneering social innovation of many who are now aged 26 and over (a tactically chosen cut off point that changes every year), the youth of twitter are building a better tomorrow by telling us what things ‘be like,’ strengthening our collective identity by dutifully chronicling every instance of ‘when you’ experience a minor inconvenience, and coining timeless contributions to literature with words such as ‘gassed.’ We passed them the baton, which they subsequently used as a selfie stick.

Many also feel that the quality of tweeters just isn’t the same as it used to be. Legendary humorists of a time now passed have moved on. Many who once joked of marriage are married; of studies now employed; of immigration now deported. The only ones left behind are the lurkers, paralysed by the fear of what might happen should they actually retweet. So many crippling unspoken rules set by keyboard elitists have removed the free flowing, communicative culture we used to have on here.

But what about the 10k character limit that’s being introduced? Maybe it will be breath of fresh air twitter needs. Perhaps it will lend itself to meaningful discussion that actually enriches our lives, considered reflections, crafted prose and poetry, and insightful discourse? Or maybe the clown will now just die from obesity and the onset diabetes caused by bloated tweets of the same crap.

The biggest problem is that social innovators have been replaced by social replicators; mimicking the momentary spark of a few without adding any real value. What that means for you men of the road is that clever people have been replaced or drowned out by people who think they are clever, but are actually just tweeting within a box of expectations set by people who are entertained by replacing movie titles every other week.

But maybe a slow, sleepy death is better. Scientists have recently expressed concern that if two serial tweet stealers were to encounter one another, the ensuing confusion about what to copy could create a universal anomaly resulting in a galactic black hole, thus ending all life in the universe somehow.

So now that twitter is all about complaining about twitter, is it time to lay down the meme? There are still parts of twitter that aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Beyond the army of clones, denoted by random letters of their names being replaced with the letter x, are foreign lands where people still talk about current affairs, things they are working on, and sharing ideas.

None of this really matters, of course. To me, mindlessness is pretty much what twitter is for, a release valve for seriousness of real life. But yes, incase you were wondering why we find ourselves in a circus, maybe this is why. It’s not really an issue that twitter is like this now, it’s more that, I have to admit, having a community the way we did before was pretty cool.

Your opinion is irrelevant.