"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." xactly...
Though I enjoyed this post for its intended reasons, “X is a void…able to reference value while holding no true value of its own.” is the vindicating drag that my 9th grade algebra self needed to read this morning.
“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.” This is so real.
Fantastic piece of writing. Will be sharing it widely. I - coincidentally - deactivated my own account this morning after being on there since 2008. Over the past couple of years I've kept putting it off and putting it off; I think because I couldn't even imagine NOT checking in there daily, and was completely unsure what throwing away a huge chunk of my social online past, and the subsequent withdrawal, would be like. Maybe it still hasn't really hit me yet, but the main thing I've been feeling since I finished deleting the the app from all my devices this afternoon is... buoyant.
Perfectly stated. Being on BlueSky compared to the Other Place js like a breath of fresh air.
The view count feature on the Other Place is also very telling. So many times, I've seen some right-wing talking point post get 10,000 likes, but 5 million views, while a quote-post rebuttal gets 100,000 likes, but only 2 million views. Not only is Musk deliberately amplifying right-wing content, he's bragging about it. I don't need to support a place like that.
thank you for this post!! after becoming fed up with how bad twitter/x/whatever has been for my mental health, on wednesday november 6 i posted a farwell tweet to my 12-year-old account, deleted the app from my phone, and haven't been on since....it's the longest i've gone without it in said 12 years lol and i started feeling so much better within just days. i miss some fun accounts (like stamps bot and the person who posts nancy comic strips, to name just a few) but overall i'm happier and less angry at random strangers and not forced to know the idiosyncracies of politics and whatever else is going on in the world that i have 0 control over. it feels freeing and good!!!!!
This is a beautiful piece of writing. Thank you. It fills my soul and gives voice to how much I detest the thin-skinned, ego-driven, deplorable nature of everything that surrounds this person.
"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. "
I had to laugh today when he got so ticked off at people tweeting about the "dinner picture" of Musk, Johnson, Trump and his miserable offspring, and health guru RFK in front of a Big Mac and bottle of Coca-Cola, he proclaimed "Accounts posting pictures of various food items including their own meals will be marked for engagement farming and automatically suspended."
This is the no-censorship town square he wanted? It's just the whole "I don't care" hypocrisy of every one of his positions that just fries my brain.
FWIW, my first realization that he was this way was the whole "pedo guy" thing. That was the moment I was like "oh, OK... he's one of those, huh?" So, so cringe and icky.
So the other side of all this is that the trollposters on X love to talk about how Bluesky is a "silo" for sensitive types. They're all screaming that they're instantly block-listed as soon as they step foot over there. I thought about this and decided to check out a few accounts that were in my block lists. With no exceptions, they were all full of disgusting memes (when they weren't outright blocked by the moderation team), and even though those accounts each had thousands of followers, each of their posts only had one or two likes at most. So what they're really angry about is NOT that they can't get followers on Bluesky, it's that their ability to "enjoy" the platform is hampered by a lack of engagement with the other side because their side isn't engaging with them.
It's all about trolling.
And most of us have decided we don't need that in our lives right now. We've had enough. For me, that was a close second to why I left the platform. The other reason was everything you so accurately covered in your column here. Thank you for giving voice to what I couldn't articulate.
"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." xactly...
Though I enjoyed this post for its intended reasons, “X is a void…able to reference value while holding no true value of its own.” is the vindicating drag that my 9th grade algebra self needed to read this morning.
“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.” This is so real.
Fantastic piece of writing. Will be sharing it widely. I - coincidentally - deactivated my own account this morning after being on there since 2008. Over the past couple of years I've kept putting it off and putting it off; I think because I couldn't even imagine NOT checking in there daily, and was completely unsure what throwing away a huge chunk of my social online past, and the subsequent withdrawal, would be like. Maybe it still hasn't really hit me yet, but the main thing I've been feeling since I finished deleting the the app from all my devices this afternoon is... buoyant.
Perfectly stated. Being on BlueSky compared to the Other Place js like a breath of fresh air.
The view count feature on the Other Place is also very telling. So many times, I've seen some right-wing talking point post get 10,000 likes, but 5 million views, while a quote-post rebuttal gets 100,000 likes, but only 2 million views. Not only is Musk deliberately amplifying right-wing content, he's bragging about it. I don't need to support a place like that.
thank you for this post!! after becoming fed up with how bad twitter/x/whatever has been for my mental health, on wednesday november 6 i posted a farwell tweet to my 12-year-old account, deleted the app from my phone, and haven't been on since....it's the longest i've gone without it in said 12 years lol and i started feeling so much better within just days. i miss some fun accounts (like stamps bot and the person who posts nancy comic strips, to name just a few) but overall i'm happier and less angry at random strangers and not forced to know the idiosyncracies of politics and whatever else is going on in the world that i have 0 control over. it feels freeing and good!!!!!
Brilliantly put. I enjoyed reading this as it articulated my thoughts. I'm also currently grappling leaving that hellscape Elon has created
This is a beautiful piece of writing. Thank you. It fills my soul and gives voice to how much I detest the thin-skinned, ego-driven, deplorable nature of everything that surrounds this person.
"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. "
I had to laugh today when he got so ticked off at people tweeting about the "dinner picture" of Musk, Johnson, Trump and his miserable offspring, and health guru RFK in front of a Big Mac and bottle of Coca-Cola, he proclaimed "Accounts posting pictures of various food items including their own meals will be marked for engagement farming and automatically suspended."
This is the no-censorship town square he wanted? It's just the whole "I don't care" hypocrisy of every one of his positions that just fries my brain.
FWIW, my first realization that he was this way was the whole "pedo guy" thing. That was the moment I was like "oh, OK... he's one of those, huh?" So, so cringe and icky.
So the other side of all this is that the trollposters on X love to talk about how Bluesky is a "silo" for sensitive types. They're all screaming that they're instantly block-listed as soon as they step foot over there. I thought about this and decided to check out a few accounts that were in my block lists. With no exceptions, they were all full of disgusting memes (when they weren't outright blocked by the moderation team), and even though those accounts each had thousands of followers, each of their posts only had one or two likes at most. So what they're really angry about is NOT that they can't get followers on Bluesky, it's that their ability to "enjoy" the platform is hampered by a lack of engagement with the other side because their side isn't engaging with them.
It's all about trolling.
And most of us have decided we don't need that in our lives right now. We've had enough. For me, that was a close second to why I left the platform. The other reason was everything you so accurately covered in your column here. Thank you for giving voice to what I couldn't articulate.
this was an absolute banger
Thank you for putting my disgust for musk into words. I am so deeply unimpressed by him this piece was perfect
I love all of the descriptions that make him sound so GOOPY, very gross, very true. Great read.
this was sooo fun to read, a scything profile on the world’s most hatable man. you hit every mark, every point, every X!🎯
Lots of people already said how wonderful this post is, but if I may just mention that "X-odus" seems to be more common and accepted than "Xodus"