When Black Friday came around, last year, I was aware of it chiefly owing to cable television. The channel I was jamming, for an audience several years older than me, sometimes recommended TV shows on other channels. This was with the potential to watch something similar.
It was then that the gaudy Black Friday advertising reached me, me on my own trying to find a way to keep warm for the end of fall and the beginning of the Christmas season.
I rather like the intensity of the season as it gains momentum. Where else did the Christmas shopping season reach me? Well, naturally it reached me on Twitter.
Sure, it’s an exercise in avoidance, but that comes with a certain vacantness I find in myself when it comes to properly doing the seasonal shop. Well, I don’t look the part. At the time, I identified more strongly with the role I played in the winter at the cemetery, not exactly a role, now, but kind of a calling, to see the mystery of winter decay and shadows of grief even among the light-heartedness of the Christmas season.
I didn’t mind Christmas. It wasn’t much of a show this year, but I don’t think I bungled it.
And somewhat bolstered, speaking of the blossom of youth, that being counted, for the most part, among the haves, put them in an honorable company and in ranks that one day might be counted among the successful.
For them, life was good.
Well, in our part here, I subscribe to a media company that does provide the service of renting movies, if you were of the mindset that you would want to rent a film for the television. I let my father know father—a favorite film of his, It’s A Wonderful Life was among the line-up of Christmas films advertised as at the end of its days, and perhaps it is.
Maybe more than anything that was a cue to me that I needed to start looking forward to what was staring me in the face.
What struck me was one more thing that was completely unexpected, one more event in what was generally an ongoing series of never-ending unexpected events, that Elon Musk bought Twitter.
I don’t want to focus on the first six months, as if you are interested, you already know what happened.
It kind of seems that Twitter, yet again, really is done this time. Musk is now musing on the possibility that every single Twitter user is going to be subject to paying a little money. Who is not going to experience frustration by that?
I think he’ll walk it back.
If we are done, then like it or not the social media platform to be on, and of course, Facebook is an interesting conundrum as it lost its access to news (in its news feed!) in Canada, it could be Discord that becomes social by necessity as Twitter slowly sees itself become less and less of… Twitter… all of the time.
I’d like to see it succeed and make money and there are concessions reasonable users can be expected to make given what it’s going to take to really save Twitter but casting it out further into stormy waters is not its path to an excellent return. If Elon does know what he’s doing, and this somehow materializes a new golden age for Twitter, that would be great… but how?
All I can say to explain myself is that it made sense to people who’d never had a voice that they found one and more than anything it was a bunch of fun for lots of other reasons.
I will be watching externally for an indication of what I need to do with this inconsistency in my life.
- It comes up again and again that we don’t know what social media is doing to kids. If an innocent does wander among Twitter minions, that child must beware.
- They give paid users many, many more characters to tweet.
- Paid users I think can upload two hours of video, so, you are rather choosy, aren’t you?
- It clearly reinforces the difference between paying your $10 (whatever the price) for your checkmark and not if it buys you access to the platform.
- It also gives weight to the tradition of helping newbies get a footing. A newbie has limited reach whereas a full-fledged member the greater.
- Ironically, the least significant users are also going to leave the most often of the time, which is not the ideal funnel. This is because social media wants to keep users on its platform for as long as possible and this change at Twitter does not seem to get that.
- That last bit, I suspect Elon thinks is cool.
- All the time that Elon’s owned Twitter he has run it completely different than every other social media company. That is genuinely… can I use a word like disruptive? Hmm.
- Although Twitter is run differently than all the other social media companies, being run differently doesn’t mean it’s being run well. A lot of its promise has been diminished and most of the crazy changes have not worked very well.
- I’m worried that Elon has long since relinquished his attachment to that $44 billion he paid for the company. He reasons there’s just as much to be made, or whatever.
- Chances are, Elon is subjected to changes of heart as much as anyone. He may not care if he pulls the company toward profitability or reaches insolvency which is a footnote to history.
It is still remembered, and much differently now that Elon’s bought it. I’m sure when he reflects on that he knows it doesn’t make all the difference in the world whether he lets Twitter get out from under him, he’s still so rich.
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The Myth of the Independent Blogger and How I Learned to Love It 