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WELCOME TO THE ELON SHOW
Last Thursday, I was in a bar in Chicago, crying into an Old Fashioned and frantically checking Twitter every 30 seconds to make sure it still existed. While my husband chuckled over memes about its potential demise, I was doing back-of-a-cocktail-napkin maths to assess just how much work I’d lose if it did suddenly disappear. Later, I joined a Twitter space of over 20,000 people, all speaking passionately about what this channel meant to them, from IT engineers in India to furries in Idaho. It was an incredibly moving - if occasionally disturbing - moment during an incredibly moving - and often quite disturbing - time. There’s a certain irony in going on holiday ‘for my mental health,’ only for that mental health to take a beating when I’m not sure what my career is going to look like in the future.
Twitter isn’t so much a social media platform anymore as it is the Elon Musk show. Since taking over, he has made a raft of ‘interesting’ decisions, including a) making people pay for Blue Ticks (raising a lot of questions around verifying public figures’ authenticity, as well as being very, very funny), b) announcing that an ensemble of the platform’s most hated Main Characters would return, and c) firing half of the company’s staff. That’s a lot of thinkpiece material in just under a month.
As always happens when a narcissist takes over a thing people love, there have been Opinions. People have said that it’s the end of Twitter. Users have been moving elsewhere (I’m yet to understand why Mastodon - which seems wildly overcomplicated - is the exile’s channel of choice whenever something like this happens). Discord has seen an inevitable boom in people creating their own servers. It feels like the end of an era. But if you’re of a certain age, you’ve seen all this before.
Like many elder millennials, this is not the first time I’ve seen a much-loved social media channel taken over by shady figures and run into the ground. I saw it with MySpace (although I found my 2007 MySpace profile recently and frankly it’s a good thing that no one still uses it). I saw it with LiveJournal (which, again, still exists but you need to be fluent in Russian to use it nowadays). I saw it with Vine (RIP). While I was never a particularly active Tumblr user, I saw it there too. If you’re wondering why Twitter was suddenly overrun with fandoms a few years ago, it’s because Tumblr made so many changes to its Terms of Service that its user base left in droves. It’s the Circle of Life. Or, to be more apt, the Circle of Poor Life Choices.
Twitter’s never been the biggest social media channel, but it carries the most weight because of all the celebrities and journalists who cannibalise it for content daily. I totally understand people’s decision to move elsewhere - it’s easy to see why it may no longer feel like a safe space if you’re Trans, Queer or BIPOC. As for me, I’ve a horrible feeling that I’ll cling on to the bitter end. For all the jokes I make about it being a hellsite full of the world’s worst discourse, I see Twitter as like the Hotel California. I can check out for a week or so, but I can never truly leave.
I joined Twitter in 2008 when I was living in Manchester, in a terrible relationship and even more terrible job. Within twelve months, my life had imploded and I was living in Liverpool with a man I met on LiveJournal (now my husband!), who I’d flirted with via Twitter DMs long before he asked me out. Cut to 2022 and Twitter is the first website I look at each morning and the last one I check at night. Every day I talk to the close friends I’ve developed there. I have found more work through Twitter than I ever have through LinkedIn. It’s like a family member - it annoys the shit out of me daily, but if it ever left me, I’d be absolutely bereft.
More importantly, without Twitter, where would I go? WhatsApp groups are great, but you don’t get that gleeful feeling when a huge pop cultural or political moment kicks off and everyone chips in. The thought of becoming a LinkedIn influencer makes me want to jump out of a window. The thought of returning to Facebook makes me want to jump off a roof. So for now, it looks like I’m stuck in Musk’s party palace with the rest of the other unfortunate souls.
Personally, I think that Twitter won’t go with a bang, but with a whimper. Musk’s announcement earlier that a number of suspended accounts will be reinstated will only spur advertisers to leave and never look back. After all, which brand wants to see their warm and fluffy Christmas content next to hate speech? One day - maybe soon - it will fall over and won’t get back up. And while I’ll mourn it, perhaps it’s time to just put it out of its misery.
JOBS BOARD
Freelance: A ‘leading London gallery’ require an interim Social Media Manager to work with them over the next few months
Freelance: Become Social are looking for a freelance Social Media Manager
Freelance: Major Players are working with an agency who require a freelance Senior Social Research and Insights Manager
Full Time: Michael O’Mara Books have a role available for a Social Media & Digital Marketing Specialist
Full Time: The Ready House are recruiting a Social Media Manager
INTERESTING THING OF THE WEEK: LESS SOCIAL, MORE MEDIA
What’s the difference between social media and entertainment, and on which side of the fence do the major platforms sit? With the increasing dominance of video content, and TikTok’s increasing dominance, there’s an argument to be made that social media is less about building connections with others, and more about being entertained. The always excellent Social Media Today does a deep dive into this topic, looking at how platforms - and influencers - are evolving, and how marketers can tap into this. While there are few of us who have the resources (or the time!) to start making our own TV shows, reviewing how we work with a new generation of content creators to speak to new audiences will make sure we’re not left behind, especially considering the current state of Twitter.
IN THE NEWS
LinkedIn is rolling out native post scheduling for desktop and Android (LinkedIn)
Political content is in decline on Facebook (Social Media Today)
Instagram will now allow you to add music to in-feed photos (Instagram)
THINGS I LIKE
Why the worst recipes imaginable are blowing up on TikTok (The Verge)
How the slow cooker changed the world (LongReads)
All the comments on every recipe blog (The Toast)
There are few recipes which sound more beautiful than this one for Pasta Marinara with 40 cloves of garlic (NYT Cooking)
“Who remembers proper binmen?” Dan Hancox examines those bizarre memes on Facebook which long for bygone times (The Guardian)
If you need cheering up today, I highly recommend taking an hour out of your day to chuckle at Maintenance Phase’s taste test of ‘Moon Juice’ (Maintenance Phase)
THE VOID BOYS UPDATE
One of these Bad Boys brought a mouse in last night which is now running around my kitchen and hides in an inconvenient spot every time I try to catch it. It’s going to be a long Friday.
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