Elon Musk took away a bunch of people's status, people who thought they were important somebodies because some nerds in an office met them in person and/or they paid some money to get a verification mark.
That's what happened. It's the election of Donald Trump all over again. One of the few people who actually understood what happened in the 2016 election - and was able to articulate it - was a guy who I actually cannot stand politically, but who happened to be 100% right - Thaddeus Russell. That election was about the common people finally getting one over on the elites, and the elites freaked the fuck out about it.
Well same fucking thing about Twitter / X. A bunch of journalists - a profession generally and historically associated with the lower and middle class - have been / are being absorbed into the elite social classes of America, and they had a special widdle mark that gave them abilities the rest of the hoi polloi didn't have... and Elon Musk came around and he didn't just take it away from them - he did something worse. Same for the academics. Same for the so-called "thought leaders".
He gave it to the common people. He put the elites and the commoners on equal footing... and they freaked the fuck out about it.
X is not dying. It just isn't lorded over by the elites any longer. And they can't fucking stand it.
Good.
The Internet was supposed to be The Great Leveler anyway. We weren't supposed to have gigantic centralized platforms where only approved speech from the Party is allowed. The sooner the rest of these enormous social media platforms either die or radically change, the better.
X didn't die, isn't dying, and won't die. The people you - whoever you is reading this - just don't post there any longer because Elon took away their toys and they can't stand it.
And yes, the "you" in the above refers to me too... a lot of the people I followed on X no longer post there. Their loss, not mine. Nothing changed except everyone is allowed to use the megaphone now.
I’m not sure I agree that this is close to reality.
The reality is much more benign. Musk isn’t the savior of free speech, he inserts rules against it constantly, like throttling nyt or saying they’ll comply with authoritarian states. He’s complains about spam and bots (despite claiming it’s an easy problem to solve) then changes verification in a way the makes it difficult know who is actually who.
Separately, you seem very bitter toward people who have left twitter after Elon changed it. Perhaps because with the voices of the elite (a politically loaded term you’re using to describe experts or people at the top of their fields) departing, the platform is less valuable and interesting.
The sad thing is, I think Elon could have been a good steward for the platform, but instead he’d rather antagonize advertisers and a subset of his users. That’s not being the great leveler though—if people select out, it’s no longer a common/shared space for everyone.
I've always found this story so fascinating. The amount they get targeted is insane for being a satire website, regardless of if you think it's funny or not.
"Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of exposing or shaming the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement." [0]
Considering the thousands of deaths and people murdered by the US government in places like Libya while Hillary Clinton fumbled foreign policy as Secretary of State, the article is clearly, by definition, satire. QED.
John Oliver and Stephen Colbert (and formerly Jon Stewart) would beg to differ. Their "satire" consists entirely of making fun of anyone to the right of AOC.
Saying something that's officially forbidden is quite often satire. Saying something that you know your audience agrees with is not.
Can you explain the satire to me then? To me that article looks like another example of Clinton's have people killed. Who is being made fun of? What's the joke?
I think people with near zero empathy regard their interpretation as primary, but most humans can understand that people have different senses of humor.
> but most humans can understand that people have different senses of humor
I agree completely. And I would think that someone with greater than zero empathy would have a hard time arguing that there is one and only one correct way to interpret a piece of writing. An author with a non-zero amount of empathy should be well aware that their work will be interpreted in a variety of ways by a varied audience, and won't seek to hide behind the flimsy shield of "satire" when they publish something intentionally provocative and incendiary.
If i found out who you were in real life, and lets say I had a big platform, and started writing "satire" about you to spreading rumors, you just have to deal with it? I can hide behind the idea I'm calling it satire with no repurcusion?
Like sticking with the Halloween theme, "Mensetmanusman's neighbors are unsure if the screams are Halloween decorations, or another child locked in his basement this year"
I can write stuff like that, because lets say I want people to start thinking you are the kind of person that tortures kids for what ever reason, call it satire, and be protected?
No one’s fundamentally obligated to impose repercussions on you for such speech, and the first amendment protects those that choose to publish your speech from any government repercussion.
> if people select out, it’s no longer a common/shared space for everyone.
It's not as Twitter was a common space for everyone before Musk took over. I do like X Spaces. Great conversations with different point of views. Far superior format to cable tv talk shows. It seems like X is pivoting it's model away from advertisers. Given the out of touch "corporate friendly" message brought to you by ... it's refreshing to hear more realistic conversations. Not perfect, but they are up against Cable news & some of the corporate sponsored YouTube channels...which seem so...fake.
How is throttling the New York Times on X anti-free speech? NYT is its own media platform, among the most powerful in the world, why should it expect a separate outlet to promote it? Further, as a powerful media outlet, the Times itself "throttles" all kinds of voices and opinions with which its editorial board and majority of its employees and readers don't agree.
The narrative that Musk is "opening" Twitter is false. The game has not changed, he just swapped out some of the rules for ones he personally likes better. For example, deadnaming trans people is now protected speech, but calling a cis person "cis" is punishable. I do not care what your opinion on trans people is - this is a double standard and is not "free speech absolutism". He also banned an account that was posting public data about his personal jets. He is afraid of absolute free speech (which is reasonable - most people are).
That's an entirely different, unrelated argument. I asked about the New York Times, which is just as powerful and influential (probably moreso) as Twitter. NYT content is not free for Twitter users to read, why should it be able to use Twitter for free to essentially mine for subscribers?
Twitter can ban and throttle whoever it wants, they own the platform.
What's __silly__ about the NYTimes being throttled on Twitter is how Musk champions his platform as a bastion of "free speech", while silencing those he disagrees with (NYTimes) or can't be bothered to defend (enemies of authoritarian governments).
What __concerning__ is how many people claim to believe that Musk is actually a free-speech champion. Are they just trolling the rest of us, or do they actually believe it? Either one is worrisome.
But every NYTimes tweet is, essentially, a free advertisement. It doesn't post a simple comment or opinion (its writers do, sometimes), but every post from the official New York Times account is a brief summary of, and link to, a story on its own platform (most of which are inaccessible to non-paying subscribers). Yes - this is also true of almost every other media platform that tweets - but that makes this an argument about advertising content, not "speech."
NYT does not claim to be a platform for everyone's free speech, and their editorial board is held to account for the shit they publish. Compleyely diffetent business.
Elon wants it both ways - when u ask him, why is there messed up shit on twitter, he sats free spedch. When u ask him, why can't X post on twitter, its because he editorialized it.
He wants all the benefits and none of the accountability.
It claims, quite famously, to publish "all the news that's fit to print" and then internally, chooses stories to promote (often with very specious sourcing) and others to squash.
I only have a few anecdotal pieces of evidence but I know of two people, who didn't give a damn about checkmarks, who have stopped using twitter because it's unusable now. They were die-hard twitter users who were on it every day but now they don't even open it. They were also the only two twitter-obsessed folks I know and now both of them have no interest.
Again, just anecdotes but I feel like that's more evidence than you're sharing in this comment.
> a lot of the people I followed on X no longer post there. Their loss, not mine. Nothing changed except everyone is allowed to use the megaphone now.
That's a weird take. The people whose posts you wanted to read no longer post on X, but also nothing has changed? It would seem you're describing a personally significant change right there.
> The people whose posts you wanted to read no longer post on X, but also nothing has changed?'
He is saying that there was no meaningful change to the Twitter software that would diminish previous value found in posting on Twitter. You post your dumb quip and it shows up in other people's feeds just as it did before Musk.
> there was no meaningful change to the Twitter software
Social networks are more about the people in the community than the technical specifics. I didn't join twitter because they had an amazing way to input 140 characters, I joined because there were people I liked there.
> Yes, that's what the rest of the comment says – that the people left due to a change in the social dynamic.
The comment: "The people you - whoever you is reading this - just don't post there any longer because Elon took away their toys and they can't stand it."
> What's with all the replying without reading going on around here lately?
That's right, the "toys" are explained as being status. The comment explains that the community moved to reducing these people to being regular Joes like everyone else, and that is why they ran away crying, so to speak. I'll leave you to ponder the veracity of that claim, if you care. It is irrelevant here.
> I dunno, you tell me.
I am afraid I don't know enough about you to even begin to understand your behaviour. I'll assume from this you don't know yourself all that well either.
Oh, yes, I understand now how reading the comments might impede or otherwise distract from you reaching some kind of goal. Reads like bad faith participation, but thanks for the explanation anyway.
To the extent people were bothered by the change, I think it was mostly because the blue check is primarily a benefit to Twitter to make it easier to spot people impersonating folks who are worth impersonating. Making it pay-to-play defeated the whole reason for its existence.
Who are the nebulous "elites" and are you suggesting that Musk and Trump don't belong in that number? It seems like the argument is that the sheep got one over on the _maybe_ wolves by... rallying behind a couple of _definitely_ wolves who threw on some crummy sheep costumes?
Don't you love when people do that? lol "Trump and Musk aren't like the elites!" like oh I didn't realize your normal, everyday, average Joe could just leverage their assets and spend $44bn to buy a platform just to ~destroy it~ sorry, make it better by making sure no one posts there.
Given the nonsensical things I've seen declared "elite" and "nonelite", I'm certain that "elite" is just used as a synonym for "whoever I currently hate".
And you don't think that the guy with the golden toilet who owns several estates and the guy who bought a social media platform because he was mad they weren't allowing the golden toilet guy on the platform are textbook elites, even by your definition?
They really do have people brainwashed to think they're on their side...
Trump genuinely isn't. Sure he has money in the bank, maybe, but he can't get invited to the cool parties. None of the newspapers support him. The man eats his steaks well done for crying out loud! I'm not saying this makes him better, much less that it means his presidency achieved something, but he was absolutely a different kind of person from who we usually see in power.
> The people you - whoever you is reading this - just don't post there any longer because Elon took away their toys and they can't stand it.
Not quite. I used to get work through Twitter until Elon made it so you need a subscription to DM people. I used to get about one DM per week, but I haven't had any for about 3 months.
Musk has enough money to single-handedly pay for the costs of running twitter for the next few centuries, and nobody in their right mind would actually let twitter be “killed”.
I dunno. Weird that he said it like it was going to happen, then, instead of saying he wouldn’t let it die. But he says a lot of weird stuff, so maybe this is one of those cases where we’re supposed to assume he’s just saying gibberish that doesn’t mean anything.
Voting for one of the elites does not really make you get one over on the elites. For all Trump's yapping about draining the swamp, his swamp was a lot smellier.
And guess how billionaires become billionaires? By screwing over poorer people as much they can.
And all of those "brainwashed mids" just randomly happen to live close to cities, where housing is more expensive, meaning higher income, which means higher education levels.
Common sense is more valuable (in the real sense, not just money) than a diploma.
And, the GPT revolution is making traditional education even less important than before.
“Hate all you want, but I'm smart, I'm so smart, and I'm in school. These guys are out here making money all these ways, and I'm spending mine to be smart. You know why? Because when I die, buddy, know what's gonna keep me warm? That's right, those degrees.” - Kanye West
Common sense has a new meaning nowadays: it is just opposite of educated. And in that semantic space education = brainwashing. So yes, by that definition higher education (etc) leads to less common sense.
>That's what happened. It's the election of Donald Trump all over again. One of the few people who actually understood what happened in the 2016 election - and was able to articulate it - was a guy who I actually cannot stand politically, but who happened to be 100% right - Thaddeus Russell. That election was about the common people finally getting one over on the elites, and the elites freaked the fuck out about it.
Some people get it. From before the 2016 election:
>Whatever the election result, you’re going to hear a lot from news executives about how they need to send their reporters out into the heart of the country, to better understand its citizenry.
>But that will miss something fundamental. Flyover country isn’t a place, it’s a state of mind — it’s in parts of Long Island and Queens, much of Staten Island, certain neighborhoods of Miami or even Chicago. And, yes, it largely — but hardly exclusively — pertains to working-class white people.
In other words, it isn't just a question of The New York Times (and the TV networks, and pretty much all of the rest of mass media) completely ignoring the rubes out in rural Michigan and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (which all, strangely enough, unexpectedly voted for Trump), but their ignoring the residents of their own city, just across one bridge.
Elon Musk took away a bunch of people's status, people who thought they were important somebodies because some nerds in an office met them in person and/or they paid some money to get a verification mark.
That's what happened. It's the election of Donald Trump all over again. One of the few people who actually understood what happened in the 2016 election - and was able to articulate it - was a guy who I actually cannot stand politically, but who happened to be 100% right - Thaddeus Russell. That election was about the common people finally getting one over on the elites, and the elites freaked the fuck out about it.
Well same fucking thing about Twitter / X. A bunch of journalists - a profession generally and historically associated with the lower and middle class - have been / are being absorbed into the elite social classes of America, and they had a special widdle mark that gave them abilities the rest of the hoi polloi didn't have... and Elon Musk came around and he didn't just take it away from them - he did something worse. Same for the academics. Same for the so-called "thought leaders".
He gave it to the common people. He put the elites and the commoners on equal footing... and they freaked the fuck out about it.
X is not dying. It just isn't lorded over by the elites any longer. And they can't fucking stand it.
Good.
The Internet was supposed to be The Great Leveler anyway. We weren't supposed to have gigantic centralized platforms where only approved speech from the Party is allowed. The sooner the rest of these enormous social media platforms either die or radically change, the better.
X didn't die, isn't dying, and won't die. The people you - whoever you is reading this - just don't post there any longer because Elon took away their toys and they can't stand it.
And yes, the "you" in the above refers to me too... a lot of the people I followed on X no longer post there. Their loss, not mine. Nothing changed except everyone is allowed to use the megaphone now.