The lost thread

• An indus­tri­alist might soon purchase Twitter, Inc. His substan­tial success launching reusable space­craft does nothing to prepare him for the challenge of building social spaces. The latter calls on every liberal art at once, while the former is just rocket science.

• Arguing about the future of Twitter is a loser’s game; a dead end. The platform’s only conclu­sion can be abandonment: an overdue MySpace-ification.

• Features come and go, little embroi­deries and fascinations, but the timeline remains, Twitter’s deepest warp. It has been there from the start, its logic invisible, inescapable, non-negotiable. (Fleets were different, weren’t they? Yes — and their quick demise had the feeling of an immune response.)

• There are so many ways people might relate to one another online, so many ways exchange and convivi­ality might be organized. Look at these screens, this wash of pixels, the liquid potential! What a colossal bummer that Twitter eked out a local maximum; that its network effect still (!) consumes the fuel for other possi­bil­i­ties, other explorations.

• I’m not here to say you should quit Twitter, or that no enjoyment remains in cavorting through the network. I’m only here to say, Twitter has no future, so please, enjoy it only and exactly for what it is — every decline is surfable — and do not disregard the alter­na­tives to its timeline, when and if they appear.

• The amount that Twitter omits is breathtaking. More than any other social platform, it is indif­ferent to huge swaths of human expe­ri­ence and endeavor. I invite you to imagine this omitted content as a vast, bustling city. Scratching at your timeline, you are huddled in a single small tavern with the journalists, the nihilists, and the chaotic neutrals.

• As a writer, looking for evidence of read­er­ship and engage­ment on Twitter makes you into the drunk looking for your lost keys under the street light.

• Many people don’t want to quit because they worry: without my Twitter account, who will listen to me? In what way will I matter to the world beyond my apartment, my office, my family? I believe these hesi­ta­tions reveal something totally unrelated to Twitter, and if you find yourself fretting in this way, I will gently suggest that it’s worth questing a bit to discover what you’re really worried about.

• The speed with which Twitter recedes in your mind will shock you. Like a demon from a folktale, the kind that only gains power when you invite it into your home, the platform melts like mist when that invi­ta­tion is rescinded.

• I’ll repeat myself. Twitter’s only conclu­sion can be abandonment: an overdue MySpace-ification. I am totally confident about this prediction, but that’s an easy confidence, because in the long run, we’re all MySpace-ified. The only question, then, is how many more possi­bil­i­ties will go unexplored? How much more time will be wasted?

• Wishful descrip­tions of Twitter as “the de facto public town square” or “the closest thing we have to a global consciousness” sound, to me, like Peter Pan begging the audience to clap and raise a swooning Tinkerbell.

• You don’t have to clap.

April 2022, Oakland