X Out

A salty, cranky case for letting Twitter die

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Photo by Shutter Speed on Unsplash

Let me tell you a story about the killing of a bird. It’s as much a tragedy as it is a comedy. 

Twitter has been seeing a steady decline for some years now, but the recent election of Donald Trump initiated what’s been dubbed “the Xodus,” a seismic shift of daily users away from Twitter and toward rival platforms like Threads and Bluesky. I suppose I’m a part of that. Yes, after over a decade of vigorous posting, I’ve decided to ditch Twitter, which is well and truly “X” now. 

“X, formerly known as Twitter.” I’ll be happy to never read those words again. Ever since the site’s rebrand in 2023, writing them has felt like a mandatory little jig. No one would have written them in the first place if X had been something new, if it had an identity of its own. But it wasn’t, and it didn’t. It was a corpse in a wig, and calling it X while the desiccated features of Twitter were still so plainly visible on its face felt dishonest, or like a capitulation of some kind, and so a website with a one-letter name came to be frequently introduced with a good deal of throat-clearing. 

But I think it’s fair to say that now, after over a year of this morbid song and dance, yes, Twitter is certifiably, undeniably X; something different, something unrecognizable. Congratulations to all involved, particularly to Jack Dorsey’s estate, and, of course, to Elon Musk, the richest man in the world who purchased Twitter for $44 billion in 2022, a transaction that sealed the platform’s fate. 

At the time the sale went through, I didn’t know much about Musk. I knew there was a robust campaign to get me to see him as a genius, per his depiction in such popular titles as The Simpsons, Iron Man 2, Rick & Morty, and others—media in which he always appeared as himself. I knew about that time those boys in Thailand got stuck in a flooded cave, and Musk offered the use of his submarine, got turned down, and called one of the divers who actually helped rescue the boys a “pedo” with no evidence, I guess because he denied Musk the opportunity to play Bruce Wayne. I knew he was dating Grimes, a musical artist who, despite her flaws, produced both Visions and Art Angels, and so I routinely ignored this fact. I was aware of Tesla. I knew that a hyperloop, a contraption promising to jettison human bodies through a tube at high speeds, was proposed, but never happened. I think there were microchips being implanted in monkeys’ brains at some point? Billionaire things, I suppose.

Also at the time of the sale, I had amassed some 175,000 followers on Twitter. I remember being concerned for the future of my native habitat. Twitter was a valuable asset to me. The abbreviated history of my time there looks like this: I was a recent college grad in Oklahoma in 2013 looking to carve a place for myself in that amorphous industry called “media,” and Twitter was where the media people were. I didn’t have any mentors or professional connections to speak of, and I knew that, if I wanted a career in writing, I would have to take a grassroots approach. I would have to “build an audience.” Twitter was where I set about doing that, one quip and one byline at a time. 

At the risk of sounding haughty, the following I managed to assemble was nothing to sneeze at. In a sea of voices, I was able to distinguish myself, which proved pivotal in forging relationships and landing those bylines I was after. This isn’t to say Twitter was purely or even mostly a positive experience for me. Yes, I met some great people, many of whom are still in my life. But I was bullied, and I bullied others. I walked on eggshells for fear of being ostracized by people in the same communities as me. I was terrified of being called out for doing something wrong, or for even being perceived as doing something wrong. I was catty, developed an instinct toward abrasiveness, and took people in bad faith. I’ll not self-flagellate: I wasn’t unique in any of these respects. Many long-suffering Twitter users would probably recognize these same wicked impulses. Twitter was designed, intentionally or not, to encourage them.

I was also, it’s worth noting, addicted. I would open the app on my phone out of muscle memory, read some of the worst sequences of words ever committed to language within 280 characters or less, close the app, and wonder why I was still on it, wonder why I couldn’t seem to go more than an hour without shoving posts like “if you’re not genetically Japanese your colonizer ass should not be drinking sake” through my eyeballs. But this, too, was part of the drug. The frustration from seeing a self-serious bad take and the catharsis of clowning on it with my friends was just as satisfying as a stranger telling me I was smart or funny. As with many addictions, the pains lent themselves to the pleasures. They mixed and became each other. It’s not unusual. 

In short, I was the ideal Twitter user. I generated a lot of engagement, and I was addicted to the product. I was so addicted, in fact, that something getting me to willingly stop using it is truly nothing short of extraordinary. But Elon Musk is an extraordinary man, isn’t he? That’s what I want to talk about. I want to talk about how extraordinary Elon Musk is. 

As the Xodus continues apace, it’s inspired much discussion across the fragmented social media landscape, as well as in various news outlets: Is Bluesky too much of a high school GSA club doing sharing circles to survive? Should progressives stay on X and refuse to cede the space to TurboHitler1488? Is staying on X unethical? Isn’t all social media evil? Can people on Threads read? Can someone pop over there and check?

Yes, there’s no shortage of conversations to be had about the turbulent state of the internet right now in the wake of X’s fall from grace. And yet, I’m not seeing a whole lot of it that speaks to me. I don’t really see myself in any of the narratives circulating about why people are leaving X and starting anew elsewhere. It seems like, for most, it’s about values. Musk shaped X into a tool to support Donald Trump, and they don’t want to be party to that anymore. For others, like novelist Stephen King, X has become “too toxic,” which also makes sense to me. I can’t say I’m super enthusiastic about the idea of staying on a site where it would not be surprising at all for someone with a Templar knight profile picture to tell me I have a “Castizo skull shape.”

But the truth is, I’m not leaving X out of high-minded principles. I wish I could say it was so, wish I could say I was checking out because I could no longer abide staying on a platform where verified pro-Nazi accounts are flourishing. I abhor that fact, but it’s not why I’m leaving. Can I be frank with you? There’s probably not a degree of toxicity that X could have achieved that I wouldn’t have been able to adapt to. I am a benthic creature accustomed to lurking the deep depths of the internet. My carapace has evolved to withstand the digital darkness and the crushing pressure of social media.

No, the truth is that, small and petty as it sounds, I’m leaving X because Elon Musk is an annoying dweeb, and I simply find X too tacky to continue with. Musk’s charmless ooze has seeped into every facet of the product, and the whole thing feels slimy now. Seeing a glut of porn bots and crypto peddlers in my notifications feels slimy. The algorithm shoveling Matt Walsh and Musk’s friends into my timeline feels slimy. “Grok,” whatever the fuck that is, feels slimy. And all these things feel downstream of Musk’s slime trail, feel like things that came directly from him scooting his ass across the platform. Do you hear what I’m saying? It’s not that these things are morally bad, which, sure, I believe they are, or that they’re nefarious, which I also believe to be true. It’s that they reek. They’re sad. They’re unbecoming. They’re irritating. They are extensions of Elon Musk. It’s impossible to use X without being reminded of Elon Musk. I am incredibly tired of thinking about Elon Musk. 

While most of my arguments against X could reasonably be classified as ad hominem, that’s not to say there aren’t more practical issues at play. Since laying off a significant chunk of the people who were holding Twitter together and instituting a verification system that gamified engagement, the place has felt downright janky on a user experience level. When I see an actual, human interaction on the app that isn’t some verified account trying to earn a pittance by engagement farming, it feels out of the norm. Yet even still, even still, I might have held on. Janky products are one thing. But that’s not all X is. It’s also a psychological experiment to push the boundaries of how annoyed I can be by one man. It’s not the fact that X is trying to psy-op me into engaging with right-wing talking points that drives me nuts, but that it's doing so without so much as a whiff of tact. It’s not merely that Musk is a Trump supporter, as many CEOs doubtlessly are. It’s that he’s sensitive, volatile, vindictive, and obvious, and him being obvious is why I know those other things about him, and I know that he’s obvious because I’m on X, the Elon Musk app, where even blocking him offers no respite from X-periencing him. 

In summary, I have been successfully irritated off the platform. The whole site smells so strongly of Musk’s desperation to be adored that it’s activated my natural tendency to be withholding from people I consider pathetic. I find I can no longer tolerate the cringe. Musk putting his own posts in my face every day because he cares so deeply about his engagement metrics is cringe. His epic memes from Reddit circa 2012 are cringe. His incessant LARPing as Tony Stark is cringe. His pretending to be so above chess because it’s “too simple” is cringe. His obscene, pornographic, highly public sucking up to Donald Trump is cringe. Remember when conservatives accused Jack Dorsey of being too liberal? It’s hard to imagine Jack constantly bleating all day about how if we didn’t vote for Hillary, Trump would send him to prison. One had the luxury of forgetting Jack Dorsey existed at all. Not so with Elon and X.  

Speaking of Donald Trump, the man for whom Musk murdered Twitter and offered it like a cat offers its owner a dead bird on a porch, their relationship gives us X-ray vision into Musk’s gelatinous spine. Remember in 2022 when Trump said he could have told Musk “drop to your knees and beg,” and that he would have done so? Say what you will about the man, but Trump is a seasoned bully, and any bully worth his salt can sniff out weakness. I’m sure their burgeoning friendship will turn out splendidly for them both. The scorpion and the frog move in together and live happily ever after, if I remember correctly. 

But, returning to my main point, what I’m trying to identify here is not so much a single policy or moral transgression that would impel one to leave X behind. I’m trying to identify a certain Muskian ethos, a very specific essence of petulant dorkiness that X forces one to inhale within the walls of its dilapidated frat house. That ethos is most clearly visible in the early cosmetic changes Musk made to his newly acquired platform, changes that were largely useless, but optimized for making you pay attention to them. He killed the Twitter bird and slapped a massive X on it. He added an exclamation point to the “What’s happening?” prompt before you compose a post. All changes an eighth-grader yelling slurs on Halo Live in 2003 would have made.

When that was done, he added a shit ton of visible metrics on posts that nobody asked for, perhaps because in Elon’s mind things that look more complicated are smarter, hid likes, buried quote-tweets, neutered the block feature—changes that service him and only him, things that made it harder to make fun of him (which was something of a cherished pastime on Twitter) and easier to see how dank his memes were, things that made it all but impossible to ignore him. Such behavior is worse than immoral. It’s pitiable. 

It should really go without saying, but X is a terrible name for a rebranded social media website. It is, however, an excellent reflection of Elon Musk. Among the 26 siblings of the English alphabet, X is the edgy poser. It pretends to be cool, but has no true identity. X is a void, a placeholder for anything and everything, able to reference value while holding no true value of its own. In these respects, X, the Everything App, is practically Elon’s son, his spitting image. Though, if X were actually Elon’s son, he’d probably spend a lot less time with it. As it stands, Musk spends most of his waking hours posting threats and insults directed at his enemies and reposting praise from his fan club. I suppose he ought to. He spent the GDP of a small nation for the website. Might as well.

Hyperbole aside, even for one of Musk’s immense wealth, $44 billion is a bit insane. But I suppose it makes all the sense in the world for him to blow such a huge chunk of change on a social media platform. His hunger for positive reinforcement has him by the hair plugs like Remy in Ratatouille. One of the few things Musk and I could probably find common ground on is that people saying nice things to you on Twitter hits different, because Twitter hates everyone. Sycophants? Meh. Nice to have, sure. But if you can get the haters to acknowledge you? That's pure, uncut dopamine. I recognize it all too well from my own experiences with being glued to the app: when the bird site chirps nice things in your ear, it’s euphoric. When it says mean things, it just makes you want to try harder. But the thing about trying so hard is that it eats you up inside. You will never get enough validation. You will never be everything to everyone. The goal posts always move. There’s no end to how hard you will have to try. 

And no one is trying quite as hard as Elon Musk. 

While X is flailing as a respectable business enterprise, it is proving to be exceptionally capable in at least one regard, and that’s as an excellent vehicle for Musk’s descent into madness, something that distinguishes it from the Cybertruck, the famously malfunctioning vehicle. My views on Musk were historically agnostic, and then extremely negative, but I do think that at least a marginally more normal man walked into Twitter HQ carrying that sink in 2022. Unfortunately, he decided to purchase the haunted amulet that whispers venom into the ears of those who draw near it, and then he placed it around his neck, and doing so has very clearly impacted his well-being. Even now that he’s forcibly bent it to his will, it doesn’t seem like he’s content. As much as he broke Twitter, it seems Twitter also broke him. The result is X. 

As for my recent experiences with X, they’ve not been great. I logged in the other day and was greeted by Arby’s asking for permission to use one of my tweets from 2021 on their social channels, followed by the sight of two verified right-wing influencers openly hurling homophobic slurs at each other and accusing one another of not supporting the white race enough. This was all going down on an app that considers posting the term “cis” an offense worthy of suspension, another one of Musk’s little changes. It’s all happening on X. 

As someone who’s never driven a Tesla, this is my first intimate experience with one of Musk’s products. Perhaps the rocket ships would offer a different sort of insight. But as it stands, and with the admittedly limited knowledge I have on hand, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Elon Musk might not be the genius that Rick & Morty told everyone he was. I’m starting to get the distinct impression that this guy might be more of a salesman than a scientist. But, hey. That’s just one pleb’s opinion. 

I’ll not spend too much time mourning Twitter. I can go elsewhere and build another audience. I’m not likely to hold much wealth in this life, or to own any companies, but I have at the very least the ability to make things, and so I’ll keep on doing that. It will be fine. All told, moving from one website to another doesn’t register terribly high on the crisis meter, you know?

But the bigger picture is sadder, and darkly funny. To me, the story of Twitter, X, and Elon Musk is the tragedy and the comedy of our world writ small, a tale of greed, corruption, and, ultimately, the hollow promise of unfettered capitalism. Our economic system exists to produce an Elon Musk, an absolute and utter individual of unfathomable wealth and resources, one man who is free, free in every sense: to do whatever he wants, to buy whatever he wants, to all but declare himself co-president of a global superpower, and it seems no one can stop him. How much sweat, how much misery, how many untold hours of toil were required of everyone else on earth to situate him there? That’s the point of all this, isn’t it? To place an extraordinarily slim fraction of a fraction of human beings at the top, and precisely one at the tippy top?

That’s the part that makes me laugh. Everything it costs to build and sustain such a system, and there, at its pinnacle, is Elon Musk. A vacuum. An unhappy, needy, empty man, numbing himself to push through his days like so many of the rest of us poor saps below, no better, no smarter, but undeniably freer, up there, at the top of the pyramid, where he’s begging on all fours for us to like him. 

X.