The Twitter I Love Doesn’t Exist Anymore

This is a sentimental story about Twitter, a little Twitterbilly elegy. I spilled tears, heavy Patsy Cline tears, for the platform for the first time a few weeks ago, during a walk with Amanda Guinzburg, a writer and photographer I’d long followed on Twitter for her excellent tweets about American politics and photos of libidinous flowers.

Guinz—her Twitter handle—and I had never met face-to-face, but with the arsonous new management torching the platform’s vibe, we had decided to stroll together in Brooklyn Bridge Park and slag Elon Musk. Before Musk took over, you went to Twitter to satirize the high-hats, while also learning and teaching. But Musk seemed to think Twitter was chiefly for propaganda, self-aggrandizement, and enemy-smiting. He never took the time to loiter and banter and approach new subjects with equanimity, curiosity, amusement. Yes, he had long waxed anti-vax and hammered away at edgelord palaver, but what did it (for me, anyway) came on October 30, when he amplified some truly twisted and false cruelty implying that Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, had solicited sex from the QAnon-promoting intruder who cracked his skull with a hammer.

The joy left Mudville. It hasn’t returned.

Today, Twitter feels of what Musk paid when he bought it in October, according to the chief twit himself. The firm Bot Sentinel estimates that , including some celebrities, deactivated their accounts in the week after Musk moved in, and as of January, more than had stopped spending on the platform. The market-research company Insider Intelligence predicts that by the end of next year some will split, fed up with hate speech and tech glitches, the most visible consequences of Musk’s prodigious layoffs. The people leaving the platform, Insider Intelligence further predicts, will be those unwilling to tolerate a “degrading experience.”