So, I can co-exist with the best of them, and I won't Tweet this link out on Twitter because I think I understand the new rules, but apparently, if you are a journalist who mentions Elon Musk, Twitter isn't your home anymore.
Now, it feels kind of thin-skinned, and it is. After all, Musk once talked about something like free speech maximalism, and this is definitely not that.
He took not his worst critics, but his truest critics, and shat them out the airlock. Maybe he didn't want them to leave voluntarily--but he was fine with them getting bounced.
Of course, the right wing folks he's been sucking up to love this, because they don't understand the terms of service, they just think that if conservatives anywhere get banzored, then liberals everywhere should be banzored. How else would life be fair? It doesn't sit right with me because I was following basically all of those guys and they were doing the work.
Now, I have no social media skills (nor 44 billion to buy social media skillz, amirite?) so I don't think I'm big enough to get bounced for my lil Elon parody songs, or whatevs. But there's the principle of the thing--do I stay when free speech is no longer the point, when the conversation palls, when the party isn't over, but the hosts are worn out and the food sucks?
Yeah, I stay. I don't quit Twitter, it quits me. Because I was here before Musk took over. Because I was a bullied queer kid and am used to hostile environments. Because Musk came to journalism central and tried to gatekeep truthtellers in a world where we all have been gatekept by the dastardliest.
He had knives out for some of our best--and will need to expect people to want to do their worst.
He will shut down the servers before he shuts down this roast. Because we operate this spit and the coals and Elon is very high profile and very roastable. He doesn't have a discourse, the discourse has him.
That's the parasocial relationship Musk developed with actual hyperliterate assholes. It was a bad idea. We like Mars and electric cars, but we will find options. Will he?
3 comments:
to the delight of authoritarian governments everywhere, I would not be surprised if those servers are down by the end of the year.
Nor would I be surprised if he has been paid to do so ...
Rightwingers love QElon Musk because he's using his power to harm people they hate.
The thing about Q and like minded sociopaths like Musk is that the people/things/ideas they hate is always changing AND growing, as in the laundry list of people/things/ideas to hate gets longer and longer. Which does make you wonder where that process ends.
Post a Comment