The Chief Twit Had One Hell of a First Week
Elon Musk closed the Twitter deal, bringing the company private, on Thursday, October 27th. I’m writing this on Monday, October 31st and already the Chief Twit (Elon’s self-proclaimed title), has stirred up an uproar across the Twitterverse.
This, of course, should surprise no one. We’ve known for some time that Musk wanted to turn Twitter’s public square into a bare knuckles brawl, deep in the mire of a white Christian nationalist cesspool.
Let’s review the Chief Twit’s first five days in office. If his first 100 days are anything like these, someone will have to write a book series just to capture the events and consequences.
It’s not all bad, however. I’m not completely pessimistic about Musk owning Twitter. There’s even one point highlighted at the end that could be revolutionary for social media.
The revolution may just be preceded by rampant misinformation, violent hate speech, and outlandish conspiracy theories.
First, let’s start by tweeting conspiracy theories at Hillary Clinton!
The funniest part? You can’t even find this tweet anymore because Musk deleted it. Hillary Clinton originally tweeted this:
Must responded with “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye” and then shared a link to an article in the Santa Monica Observer. The article suggests that Paul Pelosi was drunk and with a male prostitute.
That’s despite the fact there is no evidence the suspect was a male prostitute. And it’s in completely disregard of the wealth of evidence the suspect was a right wing extremist who was motivated to commit political violence. The police report and federal complaint have corroborated this motive.
Leave it to right wing extremists, however, to spin a tale of fantasy, tying Paul Pelosi’s recent DWI to getting attacked in his San Francisco home. From the political corner that conjured up QAnon and January 6th conspiracies, this latest conjuring was just another day at the extremist office. Nothing excites right wing nut jobs more than a community puzzle where everyone plays online investigator and tries to connect mismatching pieces.
The latest community organizer of the right wing extremist puzzle?
Elon Musk.
Why even tweet something that outlandish at Hillary? Even if (for argument’s sake) it was potentially true. Why put yourself, as the Chief Twit, in that position?
Because Elon is here for the chaos, hysteria, and views, ladies and gentlemen. He wants Twitter to be a cesspool of violent rhetoric and unhinged conspiracy theories because he wants a constantly boiling pot. We’re only on day 5 and the cesspool is already spilling hot slime over the sides.
Although he surprisingly didn’t own this conspiracy theory and double down, Trumpian style. Instead he bailed and deleted his tweet. Even he probably thought it was too aggressive for the Chief Twit less than 5 days in.
Trends and hate speech
I found the recent trends over the weekend on Twitter quite interesting.
Musk has long been a supporter of $DOGE, which refers to the cryptocurrency Dogecoin. And look further down: #Pelosigaylover. After Musk gave the conspiracy theory more life, that hashtag started trending. Others felt safe to emerge from their far right corner and spread more disinformation on the topic.
There were also these trends over the weekend:
Here’s a question: who will want to stay and hang out in this version of Twitter? I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but maybe the Metaverse has more promise.
Will top Twitter accounts actually pay for verification?
The Chief Twit was just getting started with radical moves on Twitter. Although this “pay for verification” proposal seems to be the inverse of what most social media platforms actually do.
Given the hate-filled chaos that appears to be ramping up, who in their right mind would regularly pay to be “verified”?
Also, are those not the creators a company would want to court? To incentivize? To make happy?
Am I missing something here or do the people with the biggest followings actually want to pay for the precious blue checkmark next to their names?
I don’t think there’s a market there and would predict it leads to a mass exodus of top Tweeters (or Twits), but happy to be proven wrong.
Bringing back Vine to compete with TikTok
Here’s the potentially revolutionary part. MrBeast, the top YouTuber in the world, had some insightful points about how Twitter could compete with short form video goliaths like TikTok.
If Twitter can find a way to fuse stream of conscious written content (with reasonable content moderation… if possible) with short form video, it could distinguish itself from the competition. And it could be incredibly difficult to copy as MrBeast said.
Maybe that means two versions of Twitter. One for short written Tweets and another for short form videos.
Maybe that means some combination of the two. Where Tweets and videos live on the same “For You Page” feed.
Twitter still beats the competition when it comes to breaking news. If it could leverage that strength in the short form video arena, it could be very competitive with TikTok, Instagram Reels, etc.
It could, in fact, change the social media game.
But can Elon Musk get out of his own way?
The Chief Twit cannot control himself. Even buying Twitter was too much for him. He’s faced regulatory scrutiny and fines as the CEO of Tesla for making statements that amounted to securities fraud.
Although Twitter as a private company will be less regulated, it’s still not open season. Twitter probably should still avoid promoting political violence, inciteful January 6th style rhetoric, and hate speech.
Musk should speak with the folks at Parler if he’s interested in why.
I want to be hopeful that Twitter will continue to evolve as the internet’s public square. Free speech is the cornerstone of democracy and we should all be almost completely absolutist when it comes to empowering people to speak their minds.
But that doesn’t mean no controls. That doesn’t mean letting baseless conspiracy theories and hate speech fester and thrive.
Elon Musk may think he freed the bird by buying Twitter. If his first five days are indicative of anything though, he didn’t free it.
He fried it.
