{"id":1902,"date":"2023-10-13T10:33:23","date_gmt":"2023-10-13T14:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/?p=1902"},"modified":"2023-10-13T10:33:26","modified_gmt":"2023-10-13T14:33:26","slug":"if-you-hadnt-nailed-its-tweets-to-the-perch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/2023\/10\/13\/if-you-hadnt-nailed-its-tweets-to-the-perch\/","title":{"rendered":"If you hadn’t nailed its tweets to the perch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I stopped using Twitter a while back, before it was an X website. The ongoing meltdown at that steaming crater in the connectivity graph where Twitter used to be illustrates why putting power in the hands of the super-rich is not a recipe for harmony. Contra economists’ assumptions, it’s not even a recipe for profit and economic progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I originally joined Twitter in 2014 so I could get code for a widget to echo department news on our website. Even before I finished writing a post about how much I disliked it<\/a>, I realized that there was something to like about it after all. Back then, Twitter was accessible to third-party apps. So it was no more a walled garden than having a website hosted at someone else’s domain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitter made lots of more-or-less random connections, allowing me to interact with people I never would have interacted with otherwise. For me, that’s what the internet is all about\u2014 for a while, that’s how Twitter worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A striking example of this is the time I got to edit the prose of John Rogers, writer and co-creater of Leverage<\/em>. I admire his work, and it was a fun moment of interaction that wouldn’t have been possible without Twitter. It’s a bit meta, too, because the prose I touched up was about the instability and unsatisfying nature of Twitter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Twitter<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What follows is the text that’s in the image above. A Twitter exchange from May 29, 2020.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Rogers @jnrog1 writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

TRUMP: I will shut down Twitter!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ME: This is authoritarianism \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TRUMP: We will got back to the days of blogs and Google Reader!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ME: … go on.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

John Rogers @jnrog1 writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

It’s amusing (to me at least) that while “This is fascism” scans better in the joke, I’m too much of a pedant about the word’s misuse and so I went with “authoritarianism”.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

P.D. Magnus @news4wombats writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

“Tyranny” would have scanned as well, while also satisfying the demands of pedantry.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

John Rogers @jnrog1 writes:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Goddamit, yes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I stopped using Twitter a while back, before it was an X website. The ongoing meltdown at that steaming crater in the connectivity graph where Twitter used to be illustrates why putting power in the hands of the super-rich is not a recipe for harmony. Contra economists’ assumptions, it’s not even a recipe for profit … Continue reading “If you hadn’t nailed its tweets to the perch”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[60,7],"class_list":["post-1902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-et-cetera","tag-social-media","tag-zettel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7PjAo-uG","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1902"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1920,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1902\/revisions\/1920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fecundity.com\/nfw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}