Twitter Is On Fire and I Love It
I used to hate Twitter. It was fun for a time, but the darker side of humanity depressed me. I decided to leave and reclaim some joy in my life. It worked.
When Elon Musk took over, I started writing about it all and my curiosity got the best of me. I created a new account and jumped back in to see how things would transpire.
Best. Decision. Ever.
My return to Twitter has been surprisingly enjoyable. It is complete chaos and delightfully absurd. I did not expect this.
It has the same energy found in classrooms when the teacher pops out for longer than expected.
Loud and unruly, filled with laughter and show-offs. Someone might get their eye taken out with a flying pencil. Everything could spin out of control in one second. Delightful pandemonium.
Oddly, much of the hatred everyone worried about seems to be absent. Twitter staff have been diligently removing accounts that go against their terms of service. This has prevented a lot of the hate speech that flooded the app days after Musk’s takeover. I’m sure it is still there, but I’m not actively looking for it.
The digital town square seems intact for now. The hate-filled mobs haven’t disrupted the never-ending stream of thought, as many feared.
Free speech was called into question after Kathy Griffin got suspended for impersonating Elon Musk. He later said they banned her for impersonating a comedian. He also said she could come back if she pays 8 bucks a month.
To stop any confusion and bruised egos, Twitter now requires all parody accounts to be labelled correctly.
The crowd was quick to throw rotten tomatoes at Elon for his hypocritical words. If Kathy Griffin can’t make fun of Elon, comedy is not free, and neither is speech.
Kathy had to resort to using her dead mother’s account to let us all know she was ok.
It looked like Elon was determined to anger people and contradict his original statements.
He did say Twitter would make a lot of stupid mistakes in the future, so I guess we should get comfortable with this mayhem.
Elon’s 8 dollars a month verification plan, aka Twitter Blue, overshadowed all other drama and took centre stage.
For 7.99 a month you receive “verification” with a blue check mark, priority in replies, mentions and searches. You can post long-form video and audio, instead of being limited to two minutes and 20 seconds, and half the adverts, plus an edit button available for half an hour.
I don’t see how that is worth 8 bucks a month, but I won’t pay Starbucks for any of their crap either, so what do I know?
Interestingly, no one ever talked about the perks. All the focus was on verification and free speech. People were confused and enraged.
Rightly so. If you can buy verification without having to be verified, what is the point of verification?
There is no point, nor is there any protection from fraudsters or people with a sick/hilarious sense of humour and too much spare time.
Many warned Elon about this weeks ago. It didn’t seem to bother him because he was too busy “democratising” the blue check mark, taking its former power away from the elites.
He did this for us normies, supposedly. We are now citizen journalists, using our 8 dollar blue check marks to fight against the media elite.
Mainstream media will still thrive, but increased competition from citizens will cause them to be more accurate, as their oligopoly on information is disrupted — Elon Musk
That’s the mission statement, but what happened when people signed up for Twitter blue?
Well, the trolls crawled out from under their bridges and paid 8 filthy dollars to receive a not-confusing-at-all verified icon. Account bios were filled in and images were uploaded.
Then they went on a fast and furious mission to royally fuck things up.
It was glorious.
Even Steve Jobs came back from the dead to join in on the fun. I was shocked too, but it’s really him.
O.J. Simpson confessed that he did it.
Dave Chappelle apologised to trans people.
George W. said he missed killing Iraqis.
Nestler admitted they steal our water and sell it back to us.
Awkwardly, Ben Shapiro and Ted Cruz started talking about sex. A lot.
Even Super Mario got in on the action.
Roblox announced that we could now have sex online. I was reading the comments and had my eyes burned out by Roblox porn. It was not fun.
Everywhere you looked, there was a new “verified” parody account. It was wonderfully funny, completely over the top, uncontrolled digital anarchy.
Just as expected, being verified was a joke.
As fun as all of that was, two major companies took a huge hit to their stock price in the real world.
A fake Lockheed Martini account somehow made it past scrutiny, causing some juicy damage.
Did you notice the misspelling of Martin? If you did, you did a better job than the people who saw this and panicked.
The next victim of Twitter Blue misinformation was Eli Lilly, who had to apologise to their shareholders for the massive nose dive that followed this tweet.
This is probably the most powerful black eye of the lot. They lost 20 billion off of their market cap. It has also made more people aware of the horrendous price gouging of insulin in America.
Bernie Sanders said it best:
Let’s be clear. Eli Lilly should apologize for increasing the price of insulin by over 1,200% since 1996 to $275 while it costs less than $10 to manufacture. The inventors of insulin sold their patents in 1923 for $1 to save lives, not to make Eli Lilly’s CEO obscenely rich.
To which Elon Musk, trying to be clever, replied,
Full answer to insulin price question is complex. Short answer is that original insulin, discovered in 1921 (not 1923), is inexpensive, costing as little as $25. New, higher efficacy analog variants of insulin are more expensive.
Bernie’s statement was entirely true, however. Elon confused the invention with sale and insulin is sold for less than 25 dollars.
The internet happily pointed out his mistakes.
Many Twitters users, myself included, ate all of this up. Some of it felt like subversive digital performance art.
It was a provocative slice of heaven.
Twitter did not agree.
They had no choice but to shut down Twitter Blue to prevent further activists/comedians/trolls from tanking any more stocks.
It didn’t do much. Ben Shapiro was still talking about sex.
The ever-vocal Elon has been completely silent on the matter. His last few tweets have mainly been focused on his other projects, but he did mention that he thinks “Twitter feels increasingly alive”.
Many are seeing this as the biggest corporate failure in history.
Elon bought Twitter for 44 billion dollars. Some estimates suggest it is now worth a pathetic 8 billion dollars.
The internet is full of business experts, so you will not be hard-pressed to find multiple answers for Elon's blue check disaster or predictions of Twitter's downfall.
Some believe this proves his lack of intelligence. Others point to his fevered ego for the madness. They attribute his success to luck and the theft of other people's ideas.
This video seems to prove that.
Others are convinced that he is a genius inventor who will turn Twitter into a Pheonix, transforming it into the most valuable app in the world. They frequently share their support and defend him against the haters.
I have no love for the man. He sounds like a terrible boss. He is a questionable human.
His meteoric rise looks more like a high-wire act than anything else. I believe he is successful because he is willing to take extreme risks and drive his staff to the limit to achieve his vision.
He uses his fame to create a meme-friendly veneer that hides the nefarious things he has done to survive long enough to become the richest man in the world.
It is more like magic than it is genius engineering/invention.
That being said, I do not think he is an imbecile.
Only an idiot or a crazy person would democratise verification. Elon knows how the internet and trolls work. He gets trolled mercilessly every day.
He may be many despicable things, but is he really a crazy idiot?
Really, really?
One would also assume he knows a thing or two about running a company, but maybe I am giving him too much credit. This could be his ego gone wild.
I’m not buying it. None of this makes any logical sense.
That’s why another part of me fears this is all intentional. Mainly because of the end of this article.
Elon showed the world how powerful and dangerous the bluebird is under his control. It obviously has a real-world impact.
Could this also be a publicity stunt?
I re-joined Twitter because of Elon. Even users who hate daddy Musk are hanging around to watch him fail.
People predict Twitter’s demise under Elon’s rule, but they also delight in pointing out his incompetence on his own platform. Plenty talk about leaving, yet there they remain.
And that’s exactly where he wants them. He says user engagement is at an all-time high.
I expect many new users have flocked to Twitter out of curiosity or to watch it burn. Some have brought snacks and gasoline.
All the media outlets are talking about him. This could be superb manipulation of FOMO. Everyone loves to knock down the big guy, right?
The subscription gate is closed for now, but I’m sure the demand is high. Every comedian and prankster must be desperate to jump into the Twitter ring.
Even Joe Biden is looking his way, declaring him a national security risk. Many are waiting to see if Twitter will get sued for what it did to the stock of Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin.
All headlines are good news for Elon and his rabid blue bird.
Whatever your stance is, one thing is certain. Twitter is not boring.
It is an exciting and interesting time. I’m all for it, but I have questions.
Will Twitter Blue offer real value? Is something better waiting to replace it?
Will there actually be a proper verification process in future?
Is this all FOMO manipulation gearing up for his X app idea?
Will he resurrect Vines to compete with TikTok?
Or has Elon simply lost his mind? Is this the end of Twitter?
I doubt it, but I’m not entirely certain either.
I haven’t had this much fun on Twitter in years. Whatever happens, I’m going to make the most of it.
Strap in people. This is going to be one hell of a bumpy ride.
