An Elegy to Twitter
Twitter was my social media platform of choice. Where else could I engage with scholars like Tressie McMillan Cottom, sex workers turned therapists like Raquel Savage, thoughtful technologists like Ian Coldwater within seconds of each other? I had curated my timeline to include this diverse set of thinkers. Then Elon Musk bought Twitter.
A few months after the purchase, the site began to degrade. At first in small ways, it took minutes to load. My curated timeline had more and more posts by Elon Musk and random users. Most painfully, my favorite people started leaving the platform one by one.
But I continued to use this diminished version until Karthik, a former classmate, sent me a direct message inviting me to go to another platform. I hoped BlueSky or TikTok would fill the void.
But BlueSky didn't have the critical mass to build an intellectual home. Unlike my finely curated Twitter timeline, TikTok's algorithm produced a more addictive experience. After spending far too many evenings in an hours-long fugue state watching short-form videos, I abandoned the effort to replace Twitter.
I accepted that the platform I loved was gone. And I needed to grieve. With the demise of Twitter, I had to accept that my intellectual home was also an incredibly divisive platform. The most vile memes I ignored or blocked permeated every corner of the site. Twitter amplified a one-upsmanship that killed meaningful dialogue.
Grieving a platform owned by billionaires felt like an overreaction. But I was mourning more than just Twitter. I believed the techno-utopian myth that social media could bring about revolutions like the Arab Spring or movements like Black Lives Matter. But that version of technology was corrosive to the democratic effort.
"Grief offers a wild alchemy that transmutes suffering into fertile ground. We are made real and tangible by the experience of sorrow, adding substance and weight to our world." - Francis Weller
Slowly, the loss became an invitation to be in the world differently. Rather than spending hours scrolling on Twitter, I strolled in my neighborhood. I said hi to passersby. I cultivated the habit of having difficult conversations about the world while remaining in relationship.
On my walks, I meandered into more bookstores and libraries. Books by authors like Hanif Abduraqib allowed me to revel in the kind of beautiful prose that unfolds in more than 140 characters. Without fear that I would become the controversy of the moment, I began to write more freely. Twitter's demise allowed me to reimagine my intellectual community as a more local and personal place, less mediated by technology.
As more platforms become enshittified, finding a close replacement is tempting. But leaving that technological space empty creates room for new ways of being to emerge. From that "fertile ground," we can begin to build technological futures that foster loving communities.
