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That When Feeling by Nikhil Taneja: Why can’t we quit Twitter!
Is it weird that we’re on it only to see how badly Musk is running it and how incredibly he’s ruining it?
It’s been a month since Twitter was taken over by edgy comedian Elon Musk, and his erratic, clueless, feckless and random acts of faux leadership have left the platform a little worse every day. In firing, first all at once, and then, like a weekly reminder of the existence of evil, slowly and steadily, team by team, he’s left Twitter with only about one-third of the employees it had a month ago.
Musk has also gone back on his word of how he will lead the platform’s changes, from once promising to constitute a safety committee that will take thoughtful calls on who to ban or unban from the app, to now literally doing a Twitter poll (that’s known to be easily manipulated by bots), in deciding whether the OG crackpot Donald Trump, should be back. And then, of course, he’s reinstated him, with the excuse, ‘Vox Populi Vox Dei,’ that translates to ‘voice of the people is voice of the god’, except in his fiefdom, the people are bots, and he is their god.
Damned if you do...
Every single sign, every single day, with every single tweet, points to Twitter officially turning into an even worse hellscape than it already was, and anyone with any modicum of rational thinking should get off the app before Musk asks his remaining engineers to build algorithms that brainwash us all into worshipping at the altar of the Temple of Elon-cult. And yet, and YET, as someone who tricks himself into believing he is a rationalist, every time I try to stay away from Twitter, I feel like Chandler Bing did in one of the earlier seasons of Friends, screaming, ‘I WANT TO QUIT THE GYM!!’ but then, being convinced otherwise by a hot gym trainer.
Is this a curse? Am I doomed to roam the streets of tweets till the platform literally implodes? Is it a drug? Am I addicted to Twitter and need to inject it into my veins until I have read the last ever tweet (which will probably be Musk tweeting ‘TOLD YOU SO HAHAHAH’)? Is it the red pill itself? Am I living in the Matrix right now and is Twitter the escape from the myths of our reality by exposing us to how truly f**ked up and how incredibly dank our world really is? What is it and WHY CAN’T I QUIT TWITTER!!
Damned if you don’t
At first I thought it came down to schadenfraude, the German word that stands for ‘taking joy in the pain and suffering of others’ (like Trevor Noah pointed out in his new special). It’s like when, a few months ago, the demolition of a couple of Noida towers was broadcast live on multiple TV channels, and most people had their eyes glued to their TVs or laptops for the twisted gratification of watching a building explode. I didn’t sit with popcorn to watch the demolition live because, like normal people, I just saw the implosion on a video someone posted on my Twitter timeline. So does that then make me normal that I’m now reading obituaries of Twitter posted by users on Twitter, and I have this strong urge to find popcorn?
In many ways, my renewed and re-energised Twitter usage these days is to see how badly Musk is running Twitter and how incredibly he’s ruining Twitter. Because, what used to once be an online version of a community town square, where people with different interests could come together to talk to each other about the most wonderful and weirdest interests, eventually turned into the town gallows, where people only talked at each other about their worst impulses. So, if it had to go down, maybe there’s some poignance to be found in that it’s turned into a town square again, that’s brought wonderful people together who are actually talking to each other, except this time it’s about how Musk’s Twitter is the worst.
Nikhil Taneja is a writer, producer, storyteller, public speaker, feeler of feelings, men’s mental health advocate and co-founder of Yuvaa
That Feeling When is a fortnightly column that offers a relatable take on mental health and emotional well-being.
From HT Brunch, December 3, 2022
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