TWEET STORM

THERE’S AN OLD JOKE AMONG TWITTER EMPLOYEES THAT being on the platform is like playing a huge online multiplayer game where every day there’s a different main character—meaning a person who’s critiqued, harassed, or otherwise shoved into the spotlight. According to the joke, you have just one goal: never become that main character yourself.

One day in 2018, Twitter’s main character was Vernon Unsworth, a British diver who’d spent days assisting the rescue of Thai boys trapped in a flooded cave. After billionaire Elon Musk offered a minuscule submarine to the rescue divers, Unsworth told the media that Musk’s idea was just a useless PR stunt. Musk then took to Twitter, where (in tweets that he later deleted) he baselessly accused the man of being a “pedo guy,” or pedophile. The tweets