Opinion | Elon Musk’s Twitter rebrand is reason to mourn – The Washington Post Editorial Board
Over the past few months, reports of Twitter’s death have been greatly exaggerated. Now, however, Elon Musk has made it official: Twitter — or, at least, “Twitter” — is no more. Let us mourn the cheery little blue bird.
The microblogging platform owner and Tesla CEO announced this weekend that Twitter would rebrand to “X.” The gambit is part of Mr. Musk’s long-standing desire to build what he has called an “everything app” — with communications, payments and any other functionality a consumer might desire all part of the package, much like Tencent’s WeChat in China or Grab in Southeast Asia. Or as Twitter chief executive Linda Yaccarino tweeted (if we may still refer to it as “tweeting”), “X is the future state of unlimited interactivity.”
We’ll see how Mr. Musk, having driven away many of the advertisers that bolstered Twitter’s value, gets along after annihilating another of the platform’s most valuable assets: its brand. In any case, the moment is somber.
Twitter today is already worse than Twitter a year ago. There is more hate and more harassment, and there was plenty of that to start with. There are more junk promotions for products that seem too niche — or too tacky —to justify their existence elsewhere: a horse’s head superimposed on a heartbeat line on a T-shirt designed “only for real Horse Lovers,” for instance. There are more algorithmically amplified tweets from Mr. Musk’s hand-selected VIP users, including, of course, Mr. Musk himself. And that’s when the site is working at all.
But somehow, despite the greater practical importance of these accumulating shortfalls, the loss of the little blue bird pecks at the heartstrings. The image of the small, chirping creature lent an air of lightness to the platform. It reminded users, often under the impression that they and their online conversations represented the center of the universe, not to take themselves too seriously. They weren’t there to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or write the modern-day Gettysburg Address. They were there simply to express whatever thoughts might fit into 280 characters.
There was fighting on Twitter long before Mr. Musk. There was polarization and fake news and medical misinformation and all manner of other ills. But Twitter was also a place for people to talk to other people who otherwise would never have the chance to hear them — to share thoughts and to make memes and to turn what started as a bunch of unidentified egg avatars into a community. At worst, these users were creating a cacophony. At best, they were listening to each other sing.
“Soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Mr. Musk tweeted on Sunday. We’d say rest in peace — but we can also hope they have flown away to a better place.
Attribution: Old Twitter logo dies. by Arcadio Esquivel, Costa Rica
Elon Musk hits X rebrand hiccup as police stop Twitter sign removal | Twitter | The Guardian
Ann-Margret singing the reprise of the song Bye Bye Birdie
wonder if Elon’s “X” obsession is at all connected to a messiah complex (think “x-mas”) or machoman aspirations (think “the x-men”) or maybe a subliminally suppressed desire to cross out himself and the world (mega depressive).
With a hammer a billionaire smashes the remains of a once dominant communication brand into the cess pool of failed media. Somehow making an “X” is not the same as sending a tweet. With TicToc now incorporating text messages the competition smells dead bird on the waters. Threads and Bluesky need to get out of beta with some tools that twit has. But, I expect those soon.
The Tower of Babel strikes again.
And so the Twitter splits, much like the christian churches did, into a cacophony of competing chatterboxes. Que lastima.
Starring Leon Muks as “god”.
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.
speaking of things ¡qué lástima! how about duh-sanitized history
Attribution: Sanitize American History by John Darkow, Columbia Missourian
next they’ll be applauding how the holocaust benefitted Jews by enabling the existence of Israel or how sometimes rape benefit women by leading to the blessings of motherhood.
As a longtime and continuing Twitter user I’m a bit on the “what’s the fuss all about” fence. Don’t see much change that affects my use. Since the beginning I’ve followed a list of journalists and news organizations that interest me and limit my feed only to what they post, filtering our the riff raff. It serves as an efficient quick glance at top stories I might follow further. Occasionally I post something for the fun of seeing what does or doesn’t catch interest with whomever is following me. So long as none of that changes, for all I care Musk can call it “The Mad Planet of a Psychotic Narcissist Who Should Be In a 50% Tax Bracket”.
Twitter is for me much the same as it has been since I first signed on…..the main change is all the new competing clonesites. And I do believe that Muks’ main goal was to deactivate and disrupt twitter as much as possible.
“The Mad Planet of a Psychotic Narcissist Who Should Be In a 50% Tax Bracket”.
A great idea whose time has come.
Sign me up.
He bought it for a lark (and because he made himself vulnerable to securities price-manipulation charges). It’s all play-money to him
He’s larking with a lot of other people’s money, too. He didn’t put up the whole 44B.
Welcome to illiteracy indicated by signing with an X
Craig
I’m with you. My music sites continue. A few political people get retweets, but other than the aggravation of not seeing the little bluebird, nothing has really changed.
Likes like the little billionaire (-44Bil) has more issues in life, starting with not have attorneys around. X may not mark the spot as if little stupid goes to court he is not up against Xsewer plunger, but Meta and Microsoft.
BB, could be the Xer is inviting (luring/daring) his fight-favorite fellow billionaires to do just that for attention purposes. they’re probably bored with their rocketman race by now. who knows what devilment lurks in the heart of the superrich anyway.
someone else who’s maybe eager for attention anyway he can get it
DeSantis in car crash while heading to event in Tennessee but is uninjured: Campaign (msn.com)
The state flag of Alabama is nothing more than a big ❌ on a white sheet.
”TRAIN WRECK GETS IN CAR CRASH”
the guardian:
This whole twitter-X kerfuffle has affected my nonexistent twitter use (beyond clicking on the odd link to a tweet) that someone posts here or is provided in a link in an article that I’m reading here and there not at all. It’s in the same neighborhood of unused social media as my Facebook account.
I got kicked off twitter several years ago and haven’t missed it. What I saw was a big advertising app. Folks went on there for self promotion mostly. There were a few who tried to ad content but they had to do work arounds to post anything intelligent on twitter itself. Then given all social media’s algorithims that tend to put you in a box it was a struggle just to make twitter useful.
I now read a number of publications and get their newsfeeds in my email. It gives me the variety I want without all the frustrating crap.
Jack
Sturg, Tu son en fuego en esta día. Ja!
I’ll have ‘em rolling in the aisles when I get to the Catskills.
Speaking of playing with other peoples money:
” The chain reaction crash happened before 8:15 a.m. when traffic slowed on Interstate 75 in Chattanooga, causing four cars in the motorcade to hit one another, police said. All the vehicles involved in the crash were government vehicles taking DeSantis and his team to his scheduled event, police said.”
…creating jobs for American mechanics, paying them with your money
We’re like “every vote matters” while incumbents enjoy government-funded campaign resources, the whole system’s fucked
Ammon Bundy (remember him) and one of his buddies were found liable to an Idaho hospital, St. Luke’s Regional Health, in a defamation case and ordered to pay it $50 miliion in damages.
Stupid bastards. Courts and juries notice if the defendants don’t bother to show up to defend themselves, and it seldom works out well for them. I wonder if he still thinks that attending and hiring a lawyer would have been too costly.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/07/25/texas-heat-water-breaks-greg-casar/
“U.S. Rep. Greg Casar stages “thirst strike” to advocate for federally mandated water breaks in extreme heat”
“Many held up posters that read: “Working shouldn’t be a death sentence,” “Water breaks = basic rights,” and “People over profit.”
“There are no federal or state standards that specifically protect workers from heat stress. And a recently passed Texas law will soon bar cities and counties from mandating that private employers offer paid water breaks.”
“The strike is planned to last eight hours, from 10:30 a.m. until 6:30 p.m. EST, when the House is scheduled to vote on other matters. According to his social media, Casar took his last sip of water at 10:25 a.m. EST before beginning the strike. It is part of Casar’s career-long effort to draw attention to the conditions workers face in extreme heat.”
“The former labor organizer also spearheaded a thirst strike in Austin in 2010, when he was 21, to push the City Council there to mandate water breaks, which it did later that year. However, the ordinance, along with similar rules in other Texas cities, is set to end Sept. 1, when the new state law takes effect.”
“On Monday, Casar released a letter, signed by over 100 other House members and Senators, calling on the White House and Occupational Safety and Health Administration to fast-track federal workplace heat protections. Although Congress could establish these protections, it would be a more challenging and time-consuming process due to opposition from the Republican majority in the House.”
“Jasmine Granillo, a Texas worker’s rights activist, said a water break could have saved her brother’s life. Roendy Granillo died from heatstroke in 2015 after he was reportedly denied a water break at his construction job.”
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