I have been on Twitter since 2009. That’s a lot of tweets under the bridge. In that time I developed a community (something that Elon Musk doesn’t understand). I’m a senior, and I’ve found, as is often reported, that it is much harder to make new friends when you are up in years. In a very real way, Twitter became my social circle. It was particularly important during the pandemic lock-down. During that time, I did a “card of the day” with the tarot. I got a lot of good interaction on those. I got a lot of good sympathy when I went into the hospital, and when things were fun, there was that friendly group with which to share it all.

Elon Musk took all of that away. Bit by bit, Musk has made Twitter unusable. He wants to get everybody on the service to pay $8 per month to use it. I can afford that but somehow being coerced into paying a fee for something that was free, a service to which I make a considerable contribution with my original content, rubs me the wrong way. Even if I did pay the fee, Twitter is so crippled now that I doubt that I could use it the way I once did. Those people I looked to to help me get through the day are simply gone. I couldn’t find them now if my life depended on it. With his billions and his high school punk attitude, Elon Musk took my community away.

You could say that I’m in mourning, a deep wailing blues for something that was pretty cool but is no more. You could say that I’m lonely for those voices that lifted me up. All of this would be true. It was all so sudden and violent. That world was there and then it was gone. I don’t think anyone could bring it back now. Too much trust has been lost.

I’m not looking for another service to replace Twitter. I don’t think anything will. Twitter was unique and highly dynamic, a dynamism the current owner fails to grasp. I was drawn to Twitter specifically because of its energy. Currently, none of the new offerings in social media services show that kind of energy. I am 13 years older than I was when I started with Twitter and my attitude has changed a lot. I will probably do more reading and writing instead of hanging out on social.

I don’t know why Elon Must wanted to destroy Twitter. My hunch is that he was never very good at it and he couldn’t stand something he couldn’t master. Perhaps it was just a “hold my beer” sort of thing, to destroy it just to prove that he could. Regardless, it is a huge sadness to me to see the end of Twitter.

Syd Weedon
7/4/2023