This article appears in the December 2022 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.
So it happened. We thought maybe that cringey SNL appearance would have satiated his “anti-woke” crusade, but we were wrong. Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, took an amount of money that could put a big dent in world hunger, or the housing crisis, to buy … Twitter.
In some ways it’s fitting that Musk paid far too much to own the saddest social media platform. Twitter is, after all, what traumatized nobodies who refuse to go to therapy treat as both their best friend that can’t keep a secret, and the kind of running conversation you would find on a bathroom stall door. It’s a blanket fort with a one-way mirror for all to gawk. And Elon, the most fragile and petty of our billionaires, fits right in with its tantrums and hysterics. He is living proof that money cannot buy happiness, even if it can buy you hair.
Now Musk has to make Twitter profitable, and he’ll probably make it to Mars first. He is lodged in the bowels of the most public financial blunder since Kanye decided his hill to die on was antisemitism. And the boss man is being epically dunked on, right there on his own platform, for such absurdities as banning anyone who impersonates him, while advocating for free speech. Or firing half his workforce only to rehire some of them because he needs their help. Or trying to charge $8 a month for a blue check mark. It’s a pretty cathartic way for a billionaire vanity project to end.
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But this isn’t a rant about Elon. It’s about us. What’s to become of us Twitter users? Us traumatized nobodies with our thirsty unanswered DMs? Many users are still in the second stage of grief: anger, and memes. But we’ve got to move to acceptance.
Twitter had a good run, but this season is now being crafted by the writing staff of Season 8 of Game of Thrones. Bran the Broken has now become king and it’s time for us to move on. Sure, Musk may offload his new purchase as swiftly as he acquired it, like a lonely person who shortsightedly adopted a barky Chihuahua during the pandemic. But where do we go?
Do we forgive Zuckerberg for selling our information to Big Brother election meddlers in 2016 and rejoin Facebook? That would mean having to keep up with the homecoming king turned QAnon conspiracist, and more terrifyingly, our parents. Are we ready for that?
What about Instagram, which we never boycotted along with Facebook, did we? We just convinced ourselves that there was some sort of separation between church and state at Meta, and kept feeding the algorithm with the endless scrolling to quench our bottomless FOMO.
What if this is all a long con from China to get us onto TikTok? Oh, TikTok. A place where self-confident Gen Zers in mom jeans do choreographed dances about embracing their neurodivergence. Where life is nothing but hacks, how-tos, and the #GrindsetMindset. Where baby-faced millionaire influencers are minted overnight, ready to sell you both Little Caesars pizza and gut-reducing smoothies … but DON’T MENTION PALESTINE!!! Or any cuss words, the words “sex,” “hole,” “dead,” or “XiJinPing is Zaddy 4 Life.” Otherwise it really is a great place and one day I hope to figure out how to use it.
But what if we didn’t rush to find a social media replacement? What if we used this opportunity to … grow? Instead of taking our unfiltered thoughts to Twitter, we can start journaling. Sure, it’s not as thrilling as risking getting fired for speaking our truth about Olivia Wilde and Harry Styles, but we could always leave our diary on a bus and hope it scandalizes someone on their way to work.
Chances are you probably have a family. Family is like Twitter friends, only they’re right there in front of you, gazing at your screen-filled eyes in the hopes that you might look up. What about giving them your Twitter time? Also, when was the last time you looked at yourself naked? Have you invested more in the virtual space and forgotten about the physical space your ass is taking up on the couch? When’s the last time you touched grass? I mean truly got down there and felt the blades in between your toes and remembered that you exist, even without sharing an opinion about everything.
If getting outside, expressing your thoughts in private, or spending time with your family doesn’t cut it, then do what Elon should’ve done years ago: Go to therapy, you sad hot-take monger. There will be life after Twitter, just give it time. There’s a whole world out there.
And don’t forget to follow me on IG and TikTok @franifio.
