The Ick(s) Factor

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Twitter is now called X (at least by a few). An odd name. Twitter was losing its shine, and the  cast a shadow. Whether by association or because it was a cheery name and logo, clicking the little bird gave a touch of satisfaction. It had a pleasant bit of self-deprecation to it: I'm just going to gabble with my birds of a feather. Now I'm mildly repulsed by links that use the new logo to access the social media platform. Maybe it's the X, but maybe it's the strange fellow who gave Twitter that name.

Elon Musk went from visionary to megalomaniac. I'd like to say this happened quickly, though as I age time flies faster and I don't quite trust my perspective on it.

As people get richer and more influential, they lose the ability to empathize with others. It has been interesting to watch this happen so significantly in this case.

Some people say Musk is a rich kid who never cared for or about others and just got lucky in his acquisitions, but that seems like a stretch. Certainly some of his investments have failed, but they seemed well-intended. Solarcity's shingles, for example, seemed like a good idea; they just haven't panned out.

His company Tesla gets much of the credit for generating interest in electric cars. What's more, he was willing to share some of the car's essential technology. He seemed to actually care about our planet, despite his obsession with colonizing another one.

Which brings us to where we are now. Maybe the dream of remaking a dusty red planet with almost no oxygen led him to despise those of us more comfortable with this beautiful blue ball. In any case, he now displays the all-too-typical, sometimes-crazy hubris of the rich and powerful. He blames advertisers who recoiled at his antisemitic post on Twitter of blackmail. Musk himself feels no responsibility for the decline of Twitter (which he renamed to a delete symbol); it's all the fault of others.

I had intended to ramble some more about the new, ickier Elon. But I'm not alone in my sentiments. John Oliver says what I had to say, and more. And with more humor and wit. Watch and listen:

 

Two in the Bush

Elon Musk hopes to turn the fortunes of Twitter around (dare I say he wants to flip the bird?). Already he complains of losing advertisers, so it's a good guess his best hope is to fire more staff. Which could lead to a further loss of advertisers, and so it goes. But why would anyone advertise on Twitter?

I enjoy Twitter. I use it for entertainment, for leads to good articles, for bookmarking those articles, and for informative threads by people who are pretty smart. But the smart ones aren't advertising.

If I'm like most people, ads on Facebook and Instagram are mostly annoying. I scroll past them and gain a negative view of the companies trying to interrupt me. But Twitter posts are small, and scrolling past ads is easier and less annoying. I don't remember any of them.

On the one hand, I appreciate companies willing to subsidize my source of information. On the other hand, I wonder what compels them to do it. Social media depends on advertising, but it has a poor track record of delivering results. Advertisers would do well to verify a return, if any, on their investment, and to consider the ethics of condoning Musk's irresponsible management.

One day, there will be an online forum that excels at advertising. It will be entirely devoted to advertising, helping people find what they want and need by letting them compare items to all similar products. This idea made Sweet's Catalogue of yesteryear wildly successful. It can be done digitally (Sweet's hasn't yet mastered the transition from print) and for a host of product types.

Perhaps this future forum will subsidize an editorial branch, like an old-fashioned newspaper. If that branch were Twitter, responsibly monitored, and the only ads were to remind me that a helpful advertising site makes this possible, I would be happy. I'd consider those sponsors smart.

Tweets

I've heard Trump supporters say "I could do without his tweets" or "I wish he tweeted less." I don't know what that means. Is it like someone keeps calling and you wish they would stop? Or are you talking about content?

There's nothing wrong with Twitter in itself. Tweeting is another way to communicate, and it has a distinct advantage: it limits how much you can say. But it doesn't limit what you say. If you have a problem with twitter, don't blame the medium; blame those using it.

I signed up ten years ago for a Twitter account, but I didn't understand it or use it. Eventually, though, missing Blue Dot for bookmarking, I started to use Twitter as a bookmarking tool. It's not great for that, but it's workable and accessible.

As with most tools I use, I still don't understand how to use Twitter to its potential, but I have rules for how I do use it. Mostly, I follow these rules.

• Bookmarking: I read a lot of online articles that I might want to find back someday. I might want to reread one or recommend it to a friend. A tweet records the URL of the article and recommends it to followers at the same time. (I don't have many followers, so mostly this is for myself.)
• Summarizing: I try to select a quote from the article that sums up either its theme or the point I want to remember. Some articles get a single tweet, others demand several.
• Support: a single voice isn't much, but a lot of voices can make a difference. If one of the people I follow writes something I agree with, I click the heart icon. Sometimes I retweet. Typically, I don't support tweets with profanity (but I make exceptions).
• Endorsement: If a tweet includes a link to an article, I normally do not retweet or like it unless I have read the article and agree it is worth spreading.
• Mouthing off: Some tweets exasperate me. My response, typically a comment, is sarcastic or caustic. I try to limit this use, but sometimes can't help myself.
• Challenging: If someone tweets a falsehood, I try to set them straight. I know this is mostly useless, since people tend to believe what they want and not what is true.

I'd like to learn more about Twitter. I don't use hashtags, for example, and feel like I'm missing out. A work acquaintance uses Twitter as a sort of quick-response list serve for tools and technologies that she uses. I never quite figured that out but, then again, I haven't really spent much time trying. I'm not a teacher but I'm also intrigued by Twitter's potential in the classroom.

I don't follow many people. I see that others follow thousands of people, and I don't understand how that works. As it is, I miss tweets from the few dozen that I do follow. If the condition for following hundreds of people is that I have to be constantly checking Twitter, well then, that's out. But I'd like to better understand just what it means for other users to follow someone.

Sometimes Twitter lists people it thinks I might want to follow. This is OK, though I almost never do follow their suggestions. I'm annoyed at tweets that are in my feed not because someone I follow liked or retweeted them, but because one or more of them follow the person who tweeted. I'll pick whose tweets I want to read, thank you.

I'm also annoyed that I can't edit tweets. I suppose it would confuse things, since now you would have two or more timestamps for when a tweet was "posted." But it would be easy enough to mark a tweet as edited, and make it possible to see the time (and possibly the content) of the edit. It's not a big deal for me, because there isn't much activity on my tweets. If there were, it could be awkward to delete a tweet and repost a corrected version, which is what I sometimes do now.

I don't like tweets with a URL and no information about what is there. I don't even know how to do that. Usually, Twitter automatically shows the headline and a picture or the first words from the article.

I like tweets that point to articles. Depending on who it is from, or what the article is about, it's a nice way to get recommendations on what to read. I get some excellent article recommendations through Twitter that I probably wouldn't otherwise read. For example, I recently came across an article by Elizabeth Baker, a white, straight, suburban Christian mom  who says "social media, specifically Twitter, began to open my eyes and widen my world." Every evangelical (or dysangelical) should read her story.

If it's the content of Mr Trump's tweets that you don't like, you should wish that he didn't say such false, nasty, or stupid things. These tendencies are certainly not limited to his Twitter account.

Twitter can serve as a bullhorn for BS, to be sure. But it can also be a useful tool for communicating.