Twitter is Dead, Long Live Twitter
“Now, the Star-Belly Sneetches
Dr. Seuss, The Sneetches
Had bellies with stars.
The Plain-Belly Sneetches
Had none upon thars.”
It finally happened. The great semi-purge of twitter verification for accounts who refused to take the Twitter Blue pill. Apologies for the mixed metaphors, but it somehow feels appropriate at this time. Twitter in many ways is like The Matrix, full of people who insist there is some deeper value to it, or that it is in fact a worthwhile version of reality.
That can be a correct reading. Without Twitter many social movements of the past decade would not have swelled to the heights they reached. Many injustices would have slid below the radar as they so often do when powerful people don’t want something to be known.
All of that can be true, and so can the assertions that, in the direction it is going, it is ripe for misinformation and disinformation to spread as rapidly as revolutionary ideas did in the Arab Spring.
Maybe we are in the Matrix now. This moment is a complex web of ideas and philosophy that are so muddled it is only interesting to teenage boys, or maybe, just maybe, we are Sneetches on beaches. I find that philosophical art that is made for adults is often very wide and very shallow. If you want the heart of the matter you have to explain it to a child.
In the land of Twitter, where tweets flew like birds,
Colter Longshore
There lived a group of subscribers, known as the Blue Herds.
These Blue Herds had paid for a special subscription,
That gave them exclusive access, with no restriction.
They felt quite important, with their badges so blue,
And they loved feeling special, like a chosen few.
But one day they noticed something quite strange,
Some of their favorite celebrities had lost their verification, it was quite a change!
They ruffled their feathers and let out a tweet,
“Why take away verification, it’s not a treat!
Our beloved stars, now without the blue tick,
How can we know if their account’s not a trick?”
Some said it’s unfair, while others said nay,
But the Blue Herds were not okay.
They wanted their status to be like the stars,
And without that blue tick, the stars weren’t like thars.
The Blue Herds were upset, and they started to worry,
What if they weren’t following the real Katy Perry?
Or what if that tweet from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson,
Was just a fake imposter, not the real action?
Then one day, a wise old owl came to town,
And he said with a hoot, “Why wear such a frown?
For a blue tick is just a small symbol, you see,
It’s not what makes your favorite celeb a VIP.”
“You see, they’re still the same person, verified or not,
Their tweets and thoughts are what you sought.”
And so the Blue Herds learned, that Twitter is more,
Than just badges and badges, and followers galore.
Maybe an AI as well but that’s none of your business