This post has been a long time coming, because it intersects with a lot of portions of my life. I’m an active Twitter user with about 24,000 followers. I’ve been on there 15 years and have sent 54,400 tweets in that time. My boy works for Elon, and I met Elon one-on-one back in 2000 when he had just founded x.com and had an office just a few blocks away from mine. And, of course, I’ve been watching Elon’s acquisition of Twitter with great interest.
Simply stated, I hope the guys succeeds wildly. I hope the MUCH smaller employee base is able to make Twitter into something far greater than it was, and I further hope Elon makes more billions years down the road when he takes it public again. I truly want to see the dénouement on this saga silence all the doubters.
Having said that, i do want to say a few things about Twitter, and specifically the “old” Twitter (pre-Elon).
Melissa
Let me begin by introducing you to a person that calls himself Melissa Ingle:
Melissa (and I’ll use the name he has chosen for himself, since I don’t know his original name) was one of the data scientists that did content moderation on Twitter. I don’t know Melissa’s politics, but I suspect they are somewhere to the left of Bernie Sanders’. I would also daresay that the general atmosphere within Twitter in the days that it had 8,500 employees (perhaps 1500 of which were actually necessary) was super-woke, super-left, and super-delighted with itself.
Let me be clear that Melissa’s life is his to live as he chooses. He can dress up, have sex with whatever consenting adults might elect to do that kind of thing, have surgery (which he, not the state, pays for), dream up whatever pronouns he imagines, and so forth. Honestly, Melissa, go crazy with it. Have fun with it. Lord knows that some people would find some of my behavior peculiar (like speaking with my own voice in behalf of my dogs, each with its own unique intonation, when others are around), but that’s just me being me. Zany, huh?
You Will Die Alone
I am a chartist, and I don’t hang out on Twitter exchanging child porn, or engaging in hate speech, or doing anything else that would make me a target of moderation. I was, however, banned one time (probably by something Melissa coded) and under the most innocent of circumstances. but I remarked to someone I didn’t like very much (I think it was Steve Mnuchin) “You will die alone”, inspired by this clip from Triumph:
I promptly got an email from the powers-that-be at Twitter informed me that my account was banned for 48 hours for hate speech. It was a silly, pointless tweet, because setting aside the fact the recipient would never have read it, but I’ve got to say in front of humanity that my recycling of a Triumph line wasn’t the same as, ya know, a death threat.
The sad part is that, after being briefly banned, there’s a little part of me that censors myself, and I hate that feeling. My view of free expression is precisely that: free. I’m not sure I would put ANY limits on it. I don’t want content FORCED upon me (like, oh, let’s say, having someone’s sexual kinks waved around in my face) but I don’t want to be “protected” from information.
Let’s take religion, for example. I’m a Christian. Am I afraid of the Satanic church? Nope. Do I want information from the Church of Satan suppressed? Not at all. On the contrary, I’d probably be interested in reading it. How can you actually have any kind of faith-based belief set without challenging it? That would be pretty flimsy “faith,” wouldn’t it? Indeed, being exposed to such information would probably strengthen my conviction all the more.
And let’s take another example (perhaps not too far removed from the first) which is Trump. Am I upset that his account was reinstated? Not in the least! In fact, lemme let you in on a little secret. I voted on the poll that YES he should. And this is from a guy who will actually CELEBRATE on the day of his demise. But my hatred of the man doesn’t mean I want his voice silenced. I think he should blather on with his inanities to his heart’s delight. Do your thing, you wacky bastard! A lot of people dig it!
The Blue Checkmark
You have no idea how badly I wanted a blue checkmark. Given the longevity of my Twitter account, and the number of followers, I felt I deserved it. People with WAY fewer followers than me had one, and it was incredibly frustrating that I didn’t.
I tried. God knows I tried. I applied probably a dozen different times and was rejected every time. I have no idea why, because I literally “checked all the boxes” to merit the checkmark. But their computer would instantly reject my application. My theory is that it permanently disqualified me for the whole “you will die alone” incident mentioned above. But I just kept trying, even without ever being provided a reason as to my rejection.
Then, a few weeks ago, for just a few days, a window of opportunity appeared in which I could buy my way into the goddamned thing. I have ZERO shame that it only took me eight bucks to get this thing, because as God as my witness, I have deserved a blue check mark for years. So, even thought it’s actually quite meaningless, by God, I’ve got my fuckin’ checkmark.
This is a long way to go for no point, but I’ll wrap it up by saying once again that I hope Elon kicks ass and takes names through this entire exercise. I know that he vastly overpaid for the place (I did a post a month or so ago saying that the “if he just waited a few months” price was perhaps HALF what he paid), but I am genuinely glad he’s fired thousands of goldbrickers, I am happy he seems to be having a pretty damned good time with the place, and I’m seriously glad that – – political progressive though I may be – – all the stupid wokesters are OUT of there, because they were stinking up the joint.
