Stay Calm And Keep Tweeting

Twitter isn't going anywhere just because you can't stand Elon Musk.

I find the entire ongoing collective tantrum people are throwing about Elon Musk taking over Twitter pretty hilarious and silly, and predictions that it’s going to collapse or shut down (and that this is somehow a threat to our very freedom!) quite preposterous. Twitter is going to be fine, more’s the pity.

Freddie DeBoer says it well:

The whole notion of the death of Twitter seems like a minor tantrum that will probably blow over in time, and the people who are making grand declarations about how they’ll leave because of Elon Musk are the same sort of people who are deeply addicted to the service. I could be wrong. But I would bet good money that one week/one month/three months from now, Twitter will be operating at full capacity with more or less the same user base. The catastrophizing seems pointless, to me.

He goes on to discuss how writers would be just fine without Twitter, which I think is rather obvious but which seems to have some in the professional media class quite worried. Twitter is more of a distraction than a useful tool when it comes to writing. You don’t get traffic to your posts from Twitter (not much anyways) and it’s very difficult for new writers to utilize Twitter to make a name for themselves. Beyond writers, though, we’d all be fine if Twitter shut down tomorrow. Maybe even a little healthier.

But it won’t. Elon Musk isn’t going to let that happen. If you’re worried that he fired too many people (which might be true) you can rest assured that he will hire more if he needs to. If you’re worried that he’s ‘starving’ his employees because he’s taking away expensive catered lunch, grow up. That was never about people starving in the first place, it was a perk to attract talent. If you’re actually worried about people starving, you’d be paying attention to other, more serious issues (like the fact that public schools provide far too many kids the only meals they can count on).

And no, Elon Musk could not have “ended world hunger” with his the billions he spent on Twitter. That’s not how it works or we’d have solved that problem already. World hunger isn’t something you can fix with a one-time investment of 40 or 80 or 200 billion dollars. Poverty and hunger are complex global issues that require complex, ongoing solutions.

By the end of 2021, nearly 16 million people in Yemen were on the brink of starvation thanks to the Saudi Arabian government’s war in that country. Our allies are inflicting that pain and suffering on millions of people and you can’t just take Elon Musk’s money and make it go away. The food aid sent to places like North Korea is often siphoned off by corrupt officials.

Stop using that ridiculous argument just because you personally dislike Musk. It’s gross. It makes a mockery of global hunger, which is actually a serious and tragic problem. Maybe if you spent more time actually doing something about world hunger instead of whining endlessly about Elon’s Twitter takeover the world would be a better place. Twitter employees are also not some vulnerable class of people on the brink of starvation and ruin just because you think Elon Musk is a dickwad.

I say this not as a fan of Elon Musk. I don’t care one way or another about him. He’s developed an oversized cult of personality around himself (both his fans and his detractors can be super unhinged and loony). He will almost certainly make mistakes as Twitter’s new boss (and already has) but I think anyone screaming and wailing about the impending Twitter shutdown, anyone preaching the doom and gloom narrative, and anyone taking their ball and going home, will end up eating their hat at the end of the day. Most of the loudest complainers won’t quit Twitter for good, either. They’re addicts and we all know it. Gotta get that sweet sweet dopamine fix that only retweets and likes can give you.

Frankly, the idea of Twitter failing (with or without Musk) is fine with me. It’s a ridiculous place. As Freddie also notes, if Twitter failed “What could potentially die is the ugly, vicious, bankrupt popularity hierarchy on Twitter that so many writers are caught up in.”

Ah but hate always finds a way. If Twitter dies, some other Twitter-like will raise up to take its place and all the old animosities will fill in the cracks.