Thanks to Twitter I found you a a number of other writers with fresh voices. That made the doom scrolling and wasted hours worth it. I plan to stay for now. It’s still a good source for Ukraine war info.
Glad you plan to write more on Substack. I’ll move my support here from Patreon. I’d rather read than watch a video most of the time.
I’m doing my best to reply-guy shitpost over here.. 😢 just not the same thou.. (also ‘masatdon is easy, just like email’ would work if I checked email..sooo) I will miss those times when I got a politician (local) to retweet my unhinged thoughts on bike lanes or what not.. meh life goes on
I initially jumped on twitter (or BirdChan as I've been calling it since the takeover) during the 100 day protests in Portland because I'm nearby. At the time, it seemed to be the only way to get a version of the story that wasn't entirely spin. I burned my twitter account back when Elon first made his noises about buying mostly because it was a good excuse. I don't have a particularly addictive personality, but the way that particular entity is set up was enough to get me compulsively checking it. I had some fun on there and managed to make a couple of small scale viral posts, and once spent three days verbally abusing Joey Camp before I knew who he was, just marveling at the fact that he would continue arguing (knowing more about the man, I'm pretty sure he was just spun - I was on the clock at work, so no loss for me). Ultimately though, it's a shit show.
I've been playing around with Mastodon and it actually looks like they turned the volume way down on the gamification aspect. In some ways it's much like the bird, but it doesn't seem to encourage the constant shit-post/sub-tweet battle royale that seems to be the bread and butter at the bird. Maybe that's just a function of the reduced traffic, but they really have added a lot of tools to make it less toxic. I'm really hoping more of my favorite left leaning journalists find their way over there, simply because I'm sure there will be events in the relatively near future where I will miss the format. No pressure Laura, but I thought I read that they have a simple setup to integrate with substack...
I've reluctantly set up a Mastodon account (in part because of this post) but I'm not promising to post there...social media is bad for me. It sounds like a better platform, at least. Here's hoping it takes off!
First of all I want to say thank you for coming on my show. I also want to say that, and this is from a personal level, you will be missed on my feed. We didn't always see eye to eye but I respect your opinion because I can see how you arrived at it.
Like you I spend far too much time on this website that I call the wacky bird app. It's immensely powerful. It's also insanely toxic if you're not very careful or if you're a public figure much as yourself.
I've thought a great deal about social media. Both because of my new career and because honestly it's a pretty important development. It was born or came of age during the last great recession. Most sane people have pivoted towards texting their actual friends from their phone these days. Still I think Twitter will stick around. It's too valuable to advertisers to be gone forever.
Oh they'll keep the name and the website but things will change under the hood. It's like AT&t isn't really AT&t anymore.
Like you I spend far too much time on the bird app. I'm so glad you came on my show. I'm glad that I was thumbing through Twitter one weekend day and saw your viral thread about being an Afghan war vet. Believe it or not, I really did enjoy talking to you. I'll never forget your genuine reaction when I told you that Kanye West was from Atlanta and that he was living in a utility closet in a football stadium downtown.
As the man said
Be well and do good works.
Whatever else happens for me I'll enjoy reading your newsletter as long as you put it out. I think it's important to humanize some of the people who vote for the far right. At least the poor and downtrodden. I respect you for that and other things. Because I'm my father's son, I'm going to say thank you for your service to our country. It's just something he taught me to say to veterans as a way to thank them for being a a small part of a bigger community
Like you I have my own Twitter origin story. I might or might not share it on Twitter. One of these days I am going to release a show about it, of that I'm absolutely certain. For all of its many Twitter helped me change my life. Seriously. Whatever else happens I'll owe it that.
I don't know if the next incarnation of Twitter or whatever replaces Twitter will be as accessible as Twitter was or I guess still is. I'm on TikTok I like it. But it's wrong to call it social media. And I don't like the fact that truckloads of data go to the Chinese Communist party. That's why I quit posting there.
Perhaps we'll meet each other in person someday. Perhaps you'll come on my show again, perhaps not. No pressure either way.
You identify the positive/negative conflicting feelings i have about twitter. Not sure I can give it up yet. I do like listening in on conversations between "very smart people". So much with economics twitter, black twitter, and other niches that are difficult for me to be connected to in other ways. But yeah...politically twitter is the issue for me. Thanks for sharing this and good luch in your new endeavors! I hope to follow them. :)
Okay serious comments aside, could Twitter have ever ended any other way than arguably it's worst "poster" buying the forum and then burning it all down around him? Twitter over the last few years has had an accelerating rate of meltdowns and blowups that would leak out into the bigger world and we were at the point where like 4 meltdowns were happening in a weekend. Twitter has been approaching a singularity where it is just a long fine flash of humans going ham in very public spaces. The next natural step is the Man Who Wishes He Was Dril buying it and immediately belly flopping and making it uncool.
I think I found you when Robert Evans retweeted some of your on the ground reporting during the summer of Portland protests. It was good and the things that were happing were jaw-dropping. I stuck around. I remember the drunken youtube stream of you shit-talking I think it was Andy Ngo's book? I enjoyed your emerging voice. I was happy when you got to go to NYC.
I don't like parasocial relationships and try to avoid them. But I have a real interest in what you have to say and how you have to say it. I think what you've given me was very valuable in a very personal sort of way. You've shown, or at least reminded me, that there are different ways to express a political ideology. Politically and ethically, I don't feel... alone. Not so much in that my ideology aligns with yours but showing that bubbles that I used to be in were just that- bubbles. That there's more than one path towards where we generally want to go.
Reading how you get people ideologically different to where you are now to talk to you, pretty frankly even, has reinforced my attempt to try to get along with more people and where I can try to humanize a dehumanizing culture.
None of that would have happened without le twittre, but you're right, it's too easy to let it become toxic, or worse, to just embrace the nihilism and troll for the sake of trolling.
Anyway, I'm glad the hits will keep on coming. I quit HellBirdSite the day after you did. Not the first social media I quit, probably not the last.
Looking forward to the future, what you have to say, and what you can get people to say to you.
I’ve enjoyed your writing. Thanks for your work. Best of luck on your writing career. Hope you make some good money and attend like lots of cool events. And enjoy it.
It did occur to me that you had gone uncommonly quiet. Congratulations! One of the most encouraging news anyone has ever shared on the bird site. Truly an inspiration to all of us who still linger. ;-)
I love this piece. Starting with Cowboy, you have put yourself, raw, imperfect, vulnerable and furious into your stories. That in itself, isn't that unique: but your voice is unique – and one perk of Twitter is
“hearing” it as observations went from post to published piece and threaded back. I will miss that a lot, but hopefully you post more here.
Eulogy?
Fuck yes it is... and it should feel like a funeral, because this is the end of something that was, for good and bad, a genuine place. When an old familiar neighborhood bar finally closes its doors because the kids don't want follow in the family business, there is a party. Everyone drinks too much and says goodbye. Its a ritual the passing away of a place, which is really the end of the connectivity hence the community. But when a rich shitbag buys it and turns it into dickheads-only-club with bad food that are you required to order to sit your table, there is no party; just grief and frustration.
I almost Tweeted this article but then did not want to contribute to Twitter angst for you. Gonna miss you on the Twitter but glad I can keep up with you here and in your many excellent writing pieces in print or otherwise to come. I absolutely love your writing and this from the son of a 35 year Washington Post reporter (retired and gone now). ! I know and love good reporting and you are one of the finest. Keep on keepin’ on.
I almost feel like someone should be playing "My God Nearer to Thee" as we watch the HMS Twitter slowly sink under the waves.
Apparently his "EXTREEEEEEEEEEEEEME" Buzz Bunny Twitter 2.0 reboot has resulted in the core engineering staff quitting. All offices are closed, all badges are suspended.
Thanks to Twitter I found you a a number of other writers with fresh voices. That made the doom scrolling and wasted hours worth it. I plan to stay for now. It’s still a good source for Ukraine war info.
Glad you plan to write more on Substack. I’ll move my support here from Patreon. I’d rather read than watch a video most of the time.
Thank you for mentioning twice how lumpy Musk is. His face is like undercooked scrambled eggs in color, texture, and viscosity.
Not enough people are talking about this
Sometimes I think about what would the world be like if Trump’s hairplugs had taken, and Elon had to where that stupid hairdo 💇♂️
I feel she missed the the easy dunk on hair plugs 🤣🤣
I’m doing my best to reply-guy shitpost over here.. 😢 just not the same thou.. (also ‘masatdon is easy, just like email’ would work if I checked email..sooo) I will miss those times when I got a politician (local) to retweet my unhinged thoughts on bike lanes or what not.. meh life goes on
I initially jumped on twitter (or BirdChan as I've been calling it since the takeover) during the 100 day protests in Portland because I'm nearby. At the time, it seemed to be the only way to get a version of the story that wasn't entirely spin. I burned my twitter account back when Elon first made his noises about buying mostly because it was a good excuse. I don't have a particularly addictive personality, but the way that particular entity is set up was enough to get me compulsively checking it. I had some fun on there and managed to make a couple of small scale viral posts, and once spent three days verbally abusing Joey Camp before I knew who he was, just marveling at the fact that he would continue arguing (knowing more about the man, I'm pretty sure he was just spun - I was on the clock at work, so no loss for me). Ultimately though, it's a shit show.
I've been playing around with Mastodon and it actually looks like they turned the volume way down on the gamification aspect. In some ways it's much like the bird, but it doesn't seem to encourage the constant shit-post/sub-tweet battle royale that seems to be the bread and butter at the bird. Maybe that's just a function of the reduced traffic, but they really have added a lot of tools to make it less toxic. I'm really hoping more of my favorite left leaning journalists find their way over there, simply because I'm sure there will be events in the relatively near future where I will miss the format. No pressure Laura, but I thought I read that they have a simple setup to integrate with substack...
BirdChan really captures something, goddamn
I've reluctantly set up a Mastodon account (in part because of this post) but I'm not promising to post there...social media is bad for me. It sounds like a better platform, at least. Here's hoping it takes off!
You got me to start reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and I feel like a better American for it. I'll follow you anywhere.
Damn, best compliment I've received in months. Hell yeah Rise and Fall
First of all I want to say thank you for coming on my show. I also want to say that, and this is from a personal level, you will be missed on my feed. We didn't always see eye to eye but I respect your opinion because I can see how you arrived at it.
Like you I spend far too much time on this website that I call the wacky bird app. It's immensely powerful. It's also insanely toxic if you're not very careful or if you're a public figure much as yourself.
I've thought a great deal about social media. Both because of my new career and because honestly it's a pretty important development. It was born or came of age during the last great recession. Most sane people have pivoted towards texting their actual friends from their phone these days. Still I think Twitter will stick around. It's too valuable to advertisers to be gone forever.
Oh they'll keep the name and the website but things will change under the hood. It's like AT&t isn't really AT&t anymore.
Like you I spend far too much time on the bird app. I'm so glad you came on my show. I'm glad that I was thumbing through Twitter one weekend day and saw your viral thread about being an Afghan war vet. Believe it or not, I really did enjoy talking to you. I'll never forget your genuine reaction when I told you that Kanye West was from Atlanta and that he was living in a utility closet in a football stadium downtown.
As the man said
Be well and do good works.
Whatever else happens for me I'll enjoy reading your newsletter as long as you put it out. I think it's important to humanize some of the people who vote for the far right. At least the poor and downtrodden. I respect you for that and other things. Because I'm my father's son, I'm going to say thank you for your service to our country. It's just something he taught me to say to veterans as a way to thank them for being a a small part of a bigger community
Like you I have my own Twitter origin story. I might or might not share it on Twitter. One of these days I am going to release a show about it, of that I'm absolutely certain. For all of its many Twitter helped me change my life. Seriously. Whatever else happens I'll owe it that.
I don't know if the next incarnation of Twitter or whatever replaces Twitter will be as accessible as Twitter was or I guess still is. I'm on TikTok I like it. But it's wrong to call it social media. And I don't like the fact that truckloads of data go to the Chinese Communist party. That's why I quit posting there.
Perhaps we'll meet each other in person someday. Perhaps you'll come on my show again, perhaps not. No pressure either way.
Once again like the man said
Be well and do good works
You identify the positive/negative conflicting feelings i have about twitter. Not sure I can give it up yet. I do like listening in on conversations between "very smart people". So much with economics twitter, black twitter, and other niches that are difficult for me to be connected to in other ways. But yeah...politically twitter is the issue for me. Thanks for sharing this and good luch in your new endeavors! I hope to follow them. :)
Okay serious comments aside, could Twitter have ever ended any other way than arguably it's worst "poster" buying the forum and then burning it all down around him? Twitter over the last few years has had an accelerating rate of meltdowns and blowups that would leak out into the bigger world and we were at the point where like 4 meltdowns were happening in a weekend. Twitter has been approaching a singularity where it is just a long fine flash of humans going ham in very public spaces. The next natural step is the Man Who Wishes He Was Dril buying it and immediately belly flopping and making it uncool.
It IS kind of perfect
I think I found you when Robert Evans retweeted some of your on the ground reporting during the summer of Portland protests. It was good and the things that were happing were jaw-dropping. I stuck around. I remember the drunken youtube stream of you shit-talking I think it was Andy Ngo's book? I enjoyed your emerging voice. I was happy when you got to go to NYC.
I don't like parasocial relationships and try to avoid them. But I have a real interest in what you have to say and how you have to say it. I think what you've given me was very valuable in a very personal sort of way. You've shown, or at least reminded me, that there are different ways to express a political ideology. Politically and ethically, I don't feel... alone. Not so much in that my ideology aligns with yours but showing that bubbles that I used to be in were just that- bubbles. That there's more than one path towards where we generally want to go.
Reading how you get people ideologically different to where you are now to talk to you, pretty frankly even, has reinforced my attempt to try to get along with more people and where I can try to humanize a dehumanizing culture.
None of that would have happened without le twittre, but you're right, it's too easy to let it become toxic, or worse, to just embrace the nihilism and troll for the sake of trolling.
Anyway, I'm glad the hits will keep on coming. I quit HellBirdSite the day after you did. Not the first social media I quit, probably not the last.
Looking forward to the future, what you have to say, and what you can get people to say to you.
Well shit, thank you. This means a lot -- it's what I always hope my work is doing.
Twitter has been so good...and also so not good.
Here's hoping for a good future
F'n A
I’ve enjoyed your writing. Thanks for your work. Best of luck on your writing career. Hope you make some good money and attend like lots of cool events. And enjoy it.
It did occur to me that you had gone uncommonly quiet. Congratulations! One of the most encouraging news anyone has ever shared on the bird site. Truly an inspiration to all of us who still linger. ;-)
I love this piece. Starting with Cowboy, you have put yourself, raw, imperfect, vulnerable and furious into your stories. That in itself, isn't that unique: but your voice is unique – and one perk of Twitter is
“hearing” it as observations went from post to published piece and threaded back. I will miss that a lot, but hopefully you post more here.
Eulogy?
Fuck yes it is... and it should feel like a funeral, because this is the end of something that was, for good and bad, a genuine place. When an old familiar neighborhood bar finally closes its doors because the kids don't want follow in the family business, there is a party. Everyone drinks too much and says goodbye. Its a ritual the passing away of a place, which is really the end of the connectivity hence the community. But when a rich shitbag buys it and turns it into dickheads-only-club with bad food that are you required to order to sit your table, there is no party; just grief and frustration.
Damn, this is a great analogy and exactly why it feels so bad. It's the degrading of a place...
I almost Tweeted this article but then did not want to contribute to Twitter angst for you. Gonna miss you on the Twitter but glad I can keep up with you here and in your many excellent writing pieces in print or otherwise to come. I absolutely love your writing and this from the son of a 35 year Washington Post reporter (retired and gone now). ! I know and love good reporting and you are one of the finest. Keep on keepin’ on.
PS I did tweet it in a thread of cool people who are having similar conversations... couldn’t help it!
Glad you are still kicking.
I almost feel like someone should be playing "My God Nearer to Thee" as we watch the HMS Twitter slowly sink under the waves.
Apparently his "EXTREEEEEEEEEEEEEME" Buzz Bunny Twitter 2.0 reboot has resulted in the core engineering staff quitting. All offices are closed, all badges are suspended.
https://nitter.net/alexeheath/status/1593365103331577856