Tuesday Cannon Fodder: Twitter

Good morning TSF. It’s Tuesday, which means it’s one day away from Wednesday, which means you’re less than 24 hours away from being halfway through the workweek. I’ve avoided talking about this in CF for about two weeks, but I can avoid it no longer (mostly because I couldn’t think of anything else).

It’s a real shame what is happening to Twitter. In case you’ve missed it, Elon Musk was forced to purchase it for $44B (Twitter went to court to prevent him backing out of his agreement to buy it). Since taking over, he has laid off a bunch of people, made a bunch of ill-advised, poorly thought out changes, and seems to be generally running the company into the ground. Or at least in the wrong direction.

I don’t know how many of you are on there or how regularly you use the platform, but I’ve been on Twitter since 2009. I use it everyday. It is a unique space. It truly is a digital water-cooler where anybody can talk / learn about anything they want. It’s incredible for discovering threads about obscure topics you’d never otherwise know about. It’s a great way for people to share their work — art, writing, music, whatever — for discovery. It’s a critical platform for spreading awareness. It’s important for journalists to disseminate and discover information in real time.

People have made friendships, built communities, and some have even found partners through the site. I’ve “met” so many Arsenal fans from all over the world with whom I otherwise never would have communicated.

I’m not super worried that Twitter is going to vanish forever. At worst, it will go into bankruptcy. Someone else will purchase it for pennies on the dollar and will keep it going. But it’s likely to be a rough patch on the site until that happens or Elon figures out how not to constantly trip over his own feet. It’s more a background worry / dread that something valuable that I enjoy so much is struggling. It’s not a pleasant feeling.