twitter, we're going down swinging
what would a post-twitter world even look like? feat. fall out boy
Well, Grimes’ baby-daddy Exploit Meow has done it.
It may not be her maiden voyage, but Eerie Mode is sinking the S.S. Twitter quicker than a drunk first mate can slur the words, “iceberg ahead” into his empty whiskey bottle.
The memes are dank, the final tweets dramatic. The simultaneous schadenfreude and panic have made Twitter, ironically enough, a very entertaining place to be.
I’ve been singing Fall Out Boy’s “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” on repeat as I refresh my page, waiting for a seemingly inevitable 404 error. Let’s face it, those particular lyrics fit:
We're going down, down in an earlier round
And sugar, we're going down swinging
I'll be your number one with a bullet
A loaded god complex, cock it and pull it
And what is Ego Mouth if not a “loaded god complex,” am I right?
As of writing this post on Friday, Evil Minx has been rejected by nearly all his remaining employees at Twitter and, in a move that definitely doesn’t smell desperate to stop any potential sabotage or anything, has locked literally everyone out of the building until next week.
(And yes, I know there’s a decent chance this isn’t *really* the end of the road for Twitter. It may be a ploy for attention to try and get some other poor sucker to get Ersatz Mound’s new redheaded stepchild off his plate to the tune of…$44 billion.)
But here’s a dirty secret of mine: I’ve never been a huge fan of Twitter.
I am not made for Twitter. Being concise and quippy on demand all the time is not my strong suit. I’ve never been good at being off-the-cuff. I am an over-thinker and an over-writer and I’m earnest, all of which are the proverbial oil to Twitter’s water. Fitting all my thoughts into a constrained character count mere seconds after something happens has just never been my bag. Guess that’s why I like Substack more…sigh.
If you have been a writer and/or media person over the past decade and a half, having a Twitter has been mandatory (unless you’re Jonathan Franzen). It’s expected you not only be present there, but that you have a platform. You have to have a devoted following of thousands of folks who love your witty, quippy thoughts on “Bachelor in Paradise” or Mitch McConnell or BTS’s upcoming tour or you’re nothing.
And that’s just never been my strong suit. It doesn’t come naturally to me the way it does to other writers. I have plenty of popular literary Twitter crushes who I have loved following and who I have rooted for over the years. I have valued their work and what they have to say.
Yet at times it’s felt as if it’s impossible to find an audience in the saturated Twitter-verse that’s been created. And unless I want to spend my entire day figuring out the perfect one-off joke to entice more followers, I’m just not meant to be there.
That’s not to downplay the followers and community I do have. I love all of you! And this is not to downplay the effect Twitter has had on my career so far. I’ve gotten plenty of freelance gigs and made connections with editors I respect and admire there. And no shade to folks with larger accounts, truly. I’m worried for ya’ll, especially those of you who have relied on Twitter as a platform for your work! This shit has been stressful.
But I’ve been reflecting on Twitter has been for me this past week. And Twitter has been a place in which my anxiety has been soothed by finding likeminded writers and thinkers and activists and educators and fellow millennials. Yet it is also a place that has done nothing but stoke my anxiety when it comes to politics, public policy, and hate.
Honestly, while I’ll miss the cognitive dissonance of doom-scrolling my way into an anxiety attack, if Twitter does truly end not with a bang but a whimper, I have to wonder if maybe there’s another platform out there—maybe it exists yet, maybe it doesn’t—that I’m better suited for.
But my relationship to Twitter has been an ouroboros of other people’s worries and emotions, jokes and fears, anger and hurt, joy and jealousy. It’s a place to be myself and find connection while also feel incredibly alienated. In other words: Twitter has been the spark that has burned me and the salve that has soothed my burns for a long time.
And I want to imagine an alternative way of being a writer online.
Since plenty of marginalized and otherwise ignored voices found their niches and communities on Twitter, what other under-represented groups might find space to connect on another text-heavy platform with a new interface, functionality, and, purpose?
I’m not drawing a comparison between my own struggles with Twitter and those of marginalized groups—Twitter has been a lifeline for them in ways I can’t ever fully understand.
But, at risk of sounding even more like a Carrie Bradshaw, I can’t help but wonder: is there room for me on another platform? Who will find a space if Twitter goes down in an earlier round than anyone, even Excess Moist, could have predicted?
And yes, I’m gonna boomerang on back to Exhale Mope and Fall Out Boy. I’m in too deep now.
Added to all of this there’s the irony of having Fall Out Boy stuck in my head as all of this implodes online.
Any millennial emo girl worth her salt knows Fall Out Boy’s love of a long song title. Most of them could take up most, if not all, of a tweet. Fall Out Boy is famous for longwinded, punny classics like “Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying (Do Your Part to Save the Scene and Stop Going to Shows)” and who could forget “Champagne for My Real Friends, Real Pain for My Sham Friends.” Why the Pulitzer committee has overlooked them, the world will never know.
Teenage me (and hell, adult me) loved their overwrought pop punk titles and lyrics. I’ve always been an over-writer, overly-talkative, too-much, too-anxious kind of person. When I discovered Fall Out Boy in eighth grade, it felt like someone peeked into my little weirdo head full of too much sincerity (and naïveté).
As Fall Out Boy once said, I was more than anyone, myself included, had bargained for. Truly if teens/twenty-something Sarah could be summed up in a song verse, it would be this one:
Am I more than you bargained for yet?
I've been dying to tell you
Anything you wanna hear
'Cause that's just who I am this week
Truly if teens/twenty-something Sarah could be summed up in a song verse, it would be this one.
And that’s how I’ve been on Twitter too—dying to tell folks anything they want to hear to be taken seriously. Which is exactly the opposite of what makes someone successful on Twitter in the first place.
So it makes sense their wildly over-earnest pop-punk would feel like a salve for me as walking-shit-stick Emote Murk tanks a platform where terse aloof jokes and quick hot takes reign supreme. I’m taking a moment to embrace my messy whole-heartedness, even if just for a day.
Folks on Twitter love to tell people who are doing too much online to go “touch grass.” And almost two decades ago now (sweet jesus), Fall Out Boy told their followers to “lie in the grass, next to the mausoleum” (early 00’s white pop-punk culture was all about graveyards).
So catch me outside today, touching some grass.
But before I go, tell me Erect Morgue: was this more than you bargained for?
**Also: I’ll be taking next week off for the American Thanksgiving holiday, but we’ll be back on schedule the week after! Thanks for understanding, grateful for you all, and see you on the other side!**