Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Business, Confidence, Context, Culture, Fake Attitude, Marketing, Membership, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Pretentious Rubbish, Revenge, Twitter
Over the last 12 months, one of the things I’ve had an almost adverse reaction to is twitter.
I can see Andy reading this – and I expect an email from him reinforcing this – and shouting:
“Now you know why I always called it twatter”
And he may … just may … be right.
I used to like twitter.
It had a similar feel to the early days of blogging.
Community. Supportive. Elevation of knowledge and debate.
But now …. well, it’s a cesspit of hate, ego and imposters.
Full of people on self-made pedestals claiming to be the next incarnation of Christ. Who believe they are better and smarter than the bastard love-triangle-child of Weiden, Edison and Ocasio-Cortez. Who are disturbingly confident in their claims of being more knowledgable about companies histories, operations and decision making than employees – or even founders – of those very companies. Or even the CIA.
And yet, when you look for any of the work these genius’ have actually made … what you tend to find is more tweets.
Tweets about what others are doing wrong.
Tweets about how they could do things better.
Tweets about how they know the answer to everything and beyond.
Tweets about how they want others to give them answers to questions that someone else is paying them to provide.
Tweets about how they claim ownership for business or societal behaviour change via articles that they had nothing to do with that talk about business or societal behaviour change.
Tweets about how their ego, arrogance, aggression, bitterness and dismissal of others know no bounds.
Tweets. Tweets. Tweets.
And this was before Elon Musk, the World’s comedy villain, overpaid for the bloody thing.
Of course not everyone is like this. There are still some amazing people on there who are generous and open with their comments and consideration … who can disagree without aspiring to demolish those who have a different point of view … however they’re increasingly becoming the minority, drowned out by wave after wave of hateful, spiteful, vicious commentary which – for the first time in my life – pushed me away for my mental health.
This was shocking to me for 3 reasons.
1. Having worked in this industry for so long, I have the thickest of thick skin.
2. I’m a social-media tart. Not just in terms of platforms I belong to, but in terms of ‘content’ I churn out.
3. No one was personally attacking or abusing me.
Basically, twitter has become exhausting to me.
A firehose of cliquey, self-congratulatory, pseudo-intellectual commentary that tries – and fails – to hide it is ego and insecurity shouting into an echo-chamber.
Personally this has devastated me.
I loved twitter – like I loved blogs – because I genuinely felt they helped me be become better at things I do or wanted to do.
It gave me a direct line to people I respected where I was able to listen, learn, interact, explore and debate.
Twitter wanted me to be better.
It wanted me to be exposed to new ideas, ideals and considerations.
But not now.
Now it’s like a digital version of The Hunger Games.
Destruction in 280 characters.
Words used as bombs and swords.
People elevating themselves by bringing others down … through verbal attacks, gaslighting or building a wall of imagined exclusivity between them and others, even if it only exists in the minds, ego and insecurity of those who post so often, you wonder how the hell they have time to do their actual job.
Anyway, the reason for all this is that I recently read a quote from Musk about what he thought Twitter was:
I couldn’t agree with him more.
In fact, I think he encapsulated why I have fallen out-of-love with his $44 billion indulgence.
Because mediums are neither rare nor well done.