I'm beautiful. That's how we start this episode of our professional podcast that makes it pays all of our rent. This is it could Happen here, a podcast about things falling apart, and today we're talking about Twitter because nothing embodies falling apart quite like Twitter. Um we have on the show today, Garrison Davis, Chris Sharene, James, everybody, the whole crew, except for the people who aren't here. They're not here, but I hate them, Yeah, I don't hate them. How's everybody, don't we all great? I just woke up, had my coffee scrolled on Twitter for an hour, so I'm ready to go this. This, this has been, This has been legitimately the best three weeks that we have had on Twitter since like like two. I feel bad for all the people who have like left because they're missing Twitter. So first off, I want to say, we're not gonna try We're gonna try not to get too into the weeds here if you're not a Twitter person, and most people are not Twitter people. The reason that number one, I want to start by explaining why we think this is worth getting into, which is that like Twitter as an undeniable command of like global news discourse it's where all of the journalists hang out, it's where a significant number of the politicians and wealthy business people hang out, and all of us are being broken by it, like it's one big opium den that we are all like engaging in an addiction that is destroying our brains inside. Um. It's not good for anyone, but it's undeniably important. And since Elon Musk took over, things have been things have been quite wild. So we're going to give an update on kind of some of the stuff that's been happening in Twitter at the end here, but I want to read a little lessay I wrote, just kind of looking at mostly a single post Musk made and some of the responses to it that I think says a lot about where we are as a species right now. On October, shortly after taking control of Twitter from its former shareholders, Elon Musk went on a frenzy of what you might call ill considered emphetamine derived tweets about his ideas for how the site should function. At one point, he noted that twenty dollars a month seemed like a fair price for people to pay to get or keep blue check marks. There was even talk of twenty dollars a month being the price to use Twitter at all and pay walling the entire site. Now, a lot of people thought this was bug funk, especially since like Hbo doesn't cost that much and it's and it's got and door on it. You can watch just Disney, both of both of the streaming services that I watch I stole from you Garrison, So really it's an incredible deal. So everyone made fun of the fact that Elon was suggesting this, and no one had a bigger laugh than Stephen King. Now, Stephen King, if you're not aware, is worth pretty close to a billion dollars. He is an unbelievably wealthy man, and like he has like actual money, not like stock made up money, that is cash. He has hundreds of millions of dollars in cash because people like his He has more like actual money than he probably liquid assets. He's a very liquid man because he wrote The Shining and the Stand and cou Joe and that's a clown book. So many he writes a new book every week. He's the only man who has successfully turned a painkiller addiction into putting out a best selling novel every single month. What a hero anyway, he tweeted, quote, twenty dollars a month to keep my blue check. Fuck that they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I'm gone, like in ron now. In addition to being the kind to wordplay for which Stephen King has become rightly famous, the reason that he got kind of piste off is actually sensible. Obviously, twenty dollars means nothing to someone with his kind of money, but he's not wrong about his central argument, which is that like Twitter ought to be paying people like him. He has nearly seven million followers, and he tweets very regularly. Massive accounts like Stephen King's are not Twitter's customers. They are the business itself. It is the product. I want to quote now from a report in Reuters. Quote, these heavy tweeters account for less than ten percent of monthly overall users, but generate of all tweets and half of global revenue. Heavy tweeters have been an absolute decline since the pandemic began. A Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document titled where did the Tweeters go? Now? Sonny, It's like Instagram or whatever. Once you're like, have a lot of followers, you can make money. So I think Twitter is different that way. It is. I I am the only person in the history of Twitter who was actually turned being a ship poster insway lucrative professional career. I am the only one. Everyone else that is drill drill was already like in in this like drivels already. I think, like in the scene doing stuff like well they done something has something to do with home stuck. But the point is that the people like Stephen King are what makes Twitter profitable. The idea that like they owe the company money to be able to tweet is kind of absolutely absurd, and in addition to that, like it it feeds into a serious problem the site is having before Elon bought it. They're they're they're they're attempting to answer the question of like, why are these people who are responsible for most of our money tweeting less? Because it's it's costing us like it is. There's a reason why Twitter has been on a profit down slope lately. Um the only profitable years the company has had I should know, we're two thousand eighteen and two thousand nineteen, in which they were doing reasonably well financially, and since the pandemics started, Twitter has reliably lost hundreds of millions of dollars per year. This research was which was attempting to answer the question why beat at concluded quote cryptocurrency and not safe for work content, which includes nudity and pornography, are the highest growing topics of interest among English speaking heavy users. The report found at the same time, interest in news, sports, and entertainment is waning among those users. Tweets on those topics, which have helped Twitter burnishing images the world's digital town square, as Musk once called it, are also the most desirable for advertisers. So basically, the things that advertisers like to see ads next to are becoming less popular on Twitter, and ship that is poisoned for advertisers has become more popular. Now. This is a problem for Musk because he loves crypto shilling, which is a huge issue for everyone who isn't a crypto weirdo. Um, there are some opportunities. One of the things that I thought wasn't a bad idea was Musk suggested ways in which to like monetize the site so sex workers could more effectively monetize their followings, which is a way Twitter might be able to make more money now is that likely to make the company money in excess of what they would lose in advertising for becoming known as the Fox site. Probably not, Probably broadly speaking of bad idea. Um So, in addition to Musk's outright hatred of journalists in reporting, it seems like just his general vibes might not be great for bringing back the advertisers he seems to be personally having fine. He seems to be personally inclined to like go after the things and support the things that are directly poisoned for Twitter's bottom line, which is fascinating for a guy who's spending forty four billion dollars on the side. Can can we can we mention for a second, by the way, the reason he spent forty billion dollars on the site was because he bought the stocks, the sites shares for a meme price that someone sugested on Twitter. Yes, it was like fifty four dollars and fifty four dollars and twenty cents, so there's a four twenty. Yeah, this is this is why you sent forty four billion dollars on this And he previously it's worth noting he previously did that with Twitter stock or with um Tesla stuff. He attempted to take Tesla private for four dollars to share heavily for that one. Because that's because it's very yes, exactly, because that was that was very illegal, we think, very not that funny. Yeah, it's also worth noting that like the one thing that he actually has he has created, right, he didn't invent Tesla, like he didn't even his is his reply guys. No, his his reply guys are like his unique asset, and and he's trying to price him out of being his reply guys. The cult of personality stuff, yeah, yeah, but like that's largely built on Twitter, right, like his the whole cult around him, well and read it. But yeah, and just like the fact that like people think the genius x y Z whatever. Yeah, that is that's too big a tapping for today's episode and recently we'll see. But you know, we're not talking today about like Musk's broadly speaking, why Musk is a con man. Well, we'll talk about that. We've talked about that on plenty of other occasions. Nor is this supposed to be an exhaustive explanation for why Musk's Twitter is likely to fall apart. We don't have the end of that story yet. So instead, what I want to do is review a single tweet and particularly the responses to that tweet, because I think it is hugely interesting and kind of an important cultural artifact. So the tweet was a response by Musk to the Stephen King tweet that I I read earlier. Right King being like, I'm not gonna pay this, Musk responded simply, we need to pay the bills. Somehow Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about eight dollars? Now, this is also very funny because you and you're like, whoa, there's nothing in there. There's nothing, but it's it's just bouncing around like a fucking bb and a goddamn dryer. Um. So the first comments to this response, or what you'd expect, there's a mix of anti Musk lib types laughing at his bad business sense, mocking the idea of making Twitter's most valuable users pay for the site. Um, you've got your Musk defenders insisting that Blue checks some sort of out of touch elite, which is one of my favorite bits of deranged right wing culture that like there's some sort of like yeah verse s I this there's like a there's an old left Twitter joke like like like literally it was like there was there was a running series of jokes about like the blue check bourgeoisie and like, and then somehow all of these people became convinced it was real and through a process that like I cannot even begin to understand the the process, and this is critical, is that you cannot tell jokes on Twitter dot com. That's true. Um, that that is that is the actual process, and that is the Yeah, that's that's that's what's happening here. So a representative Musk defender responses this comment by Douche Canoe Magoo and everyone ha ha ha ha ha. Dude worth five million who wants to tax the ricks rich can't play twenty dollars ha ha. Hey elon Musk, I'll play this pay this loser's twenty dollars a month. Now. I looked into it, and this guy is an anti vaxer with thirty four followers. If you're if you're curious on the lip side, you've got guys like Keith Olberman's subtweeting Musks to try and use like numbers in math to show that this business plan which was never a business real business plan isn't going to make money. The first interesting response there was a few comments down from Keith by a journalist named Hopewell Chinono. Good morning, Elon Musk. For a lot of journalists in Africa, verification has helped us to not fall victim to state tactics to use our names to spread propaganda. I have been to jail three times inside six months for exposing corruption. Few African journalists will afford the U S twenty dollars and attached to this tweet where images from Too Guardian articles about Hope Well. I'm going to quote from one now. Nno posted on his Twitter account that police had taken him from his house and said that they were charging him with communicating falsehoods. The arrest comes after Chennono tweeted that police had beaten an infant to death while enforcing COVID nineteen lockdown rules this week. Police later said the information was false. Before the latest arrest, Hinono was out on bail and separate charges of inciting violence as after he voiced support for an anti government protest in July, and also on contemptive court charges for allegedly claiming corruption within the country's National Prosecution Agency. Chanono is one of Zimbabwe's most prominent critics of President Emerson. I'm not gonna be able to pronounce that last name administration, accusing it of corruption and human rights abuses. The government denies the charges. Now, Hope Well is a Harvard Fellow. He is an award winning journalist and I had no idea this guy existed prior to this tweet. Uh. He is an extremely courageous person who, from everything I can read, is reporting on corruption within the Zimbabwean government has been very influential, recently led to the sacking of the very corrupt Health Minister. I would not have heard of this man without Twitter. He would not have had a voice capable of reaching a large number of people without Twitter. It's possible those Guardian articles about him and his struggle would not exist if it weren't for the prominence of his Twitter account. Um, and you know, it's also worth noting that if Twitter weren't the site that it is, he never would have had a chance to make his concerns public anywhere close to the CEO of that company. Many things about this interaction cry out for the very best about Twitter. The smallest and probably most valuable of the major social media websites, and at least a social level, we all call it the hell site, and a huge part of Twitter culture is despising it. But moments like this really do make a lot of the bullshit worthwhile. In the articles hope Will attached to his post, he's wearing a red and white striped shirt. The top response to Hopewell's replied a musk is by Jason Roeberg. A musk reply by Guy one, American News and Fox News commenter. He writes, why did they dress you like American Waldo, I'll pay for your subscription. Hopo replies, that is very kind of you. That is prison uniform. My imprisonment was triggered by tweets exposing state corruption. The ruling political elites use captured state institutions to punish analyst who exposed the looting of public funds um which I don't know. Another perfectly characteristic Twitter response and being like look at the way he's dressed and being like, yeah, that's a prison uniform. I was I just got out of prison for when I was doing amazing criminalism. Yeah, it's just very It says a lot there's a lot going on here. Yeah. Have you come across his I guess, I hope, Well, you know, no dot com which is not his website. No, Jesus Mark God, is it something? Is that like a government thing? Yes, it's a government I hope. But you don't know. He's very deceptives. He's the liar and dishonest person. Yeah. Yeah, so just wow, this is an incredible story website. Look at this. They've done some work. I love. The background is like a boat sailing in the star sol to see what the fuck they They're not doing their finest work over there. The first section is the title in all caps is and I quote Daddy Hope story that his Twitter handled that. Okay, okay, his residence looks like a sex he then apparently okay, yeah, I don't know what they look like, but you could like it's it's obvious, like he's obviously like disinformation about him personally. It's a big fucking issue for this guy. Yeah. Dot com is just a great example of live verification on Twitter is an important it's a wonderful example of that. Garrison. Now, the responses to this guy continued to be pretty amazing. Another fun reply was simply I thought that in Zimbabwe they arrest only white folks. Oh, has that person got a picture of like a some kind of white guy very short shorts? And yeah, yeah he's some some some serious Rhodesian ship on that dude's timeline. Now, I want to note most of the responses to Hopeful are very positive um and all of the negative replies have multiple people attacking the people who are going after hope Well and defending him. Because Twitter works the way that it does, though this increases engagement provides an algorithmic boost to everybody involved. The whole situation in his replies is kind of as bleak and hopeless as Hopell's initial reply is itself hopeful. Scrolling down further, the applies to Musk's tweet. We get this gym from the skin doctor, and this is somebody just like tweeting his his advice to Ellen. How about privileged classes like white straight men and women upper cast Hindus pay a hundred dollars for their blue ticks. You keep eight dollars each from it and pay the rest ninety two dollars to oppressed classes blue tickers like rich communists, LGBT doll its feminists, left journals, vegans, peta fair. No, this one is quite the response that it has. It has seventy dred likes, which makes sense because the skin Doctor has more than half million followers. He is a Hindu dermatologist from Flower Mount, Texas who posts like pro Hindu fascist content Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. He also posts right wing sketch comedy videos about how a modern Titanic sinking wouldn't put women and children first because of wokeness. Um. He's an incredible account. I recommend following the skin Doctor. Yeah, this is the world that are our wants. Yeah, and this is like yeah. The responses of his to his tweet are another perfect microcosm of Twitter, because a big part of it is he has this like long fight with another right winger who doesn't get the joke and attacks him for being woke, and also gets thousands of yes, it's so good. Um, and it's probably you know, fair for me to talk just a little bit about the liberal lefty you know must reply guys, the ones who reply it to one of his posts, but attacking him. So let's talk about Eric Davis, a verified candidate for the North Carolina Statehouse with fifty four followers. Um, not a lot of followers. He is a Democrat. Uh, and he seems to be trying to draft off of Musk's replies to increase his own popularity. And that this was you know, prior to the election. Uh, we should check in on how Eric Davis did in North Carolina for him. And then I just love that, like all his replying just landed with people like it's very funny. Yeah, his reply shows a total lack of understanding about what's happening with Twitter. Quote. Wait, so Twitter was perfectly fine before the supposedly richest man took control, but now that it has even more money and got rid of many of the workers, so it's even cheaper to sustain now it can't survive without paying That is part logic for the Musk fan base. I guess, which is completely wrong. Twitter hasn't was not making money. Twitter was losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year and now makes even less money. But anyway, Um, it's got three hundred and seventy four likes, which is one of the biggest tweets this particular candidate has had, by the way, that that is h he know, Wait, what are we think the same guy? Did he win North Caroline his school board? Oh no, no, no for school. But in the general election he got eight thousand votes and lost by how much? He lost by by fifty two percent of the vote and got seventy six in his Yeah, if only, if only fully he tweeted more, if only he'd owned Elon Musko a little bit harder via tweet, that would have flung things. God, that's funny, so further down as a political cartoon, and I do not understand it, but I am. I'm going to force you all to to observe it. I could look at it like I can try to explain it. Drop it in the chat. So that's the that's the political cartoon. Okay. So it's the meme of the guy who's who's walking with his girlfriend and it's looking at the other woman, except all of their faces are cartoon faces of Elon Mutton, Elon Musk's girlfriend. It's wearing a Twitter shirt and he's looking over at a girl with a red TikTok. What does this mean? That's a hard question, Robert. You we could do a whole semester about what this means. Yeah, distracted by Aiden looking at Ellen. It's like ignoring Twitter because you're looking over at the red pill. I guess I don't know you're looking at Also, you like you. I don't think it's supposed to meet anything. They all have his face, which makes it so much more complicated. It's a lot going on there. I'm so happy that none of us have been on the internet enough to understand what this means. I'm so proud of us. And lastly, there's my very favorite reply from someone called doctor Disrespect with a staggering two point four million followers. Do you not know who this is? He's some video game player he wears like a plate carrier while he's playing video games, and also public sometimes Oh my god. Anyway, yeah, he tweets this to musk. Let the two X give you a thought. Allow face scan slash retinal scan into a blue check mode, similar to iPhone unlock through face scan, but in this case only while scan is active. A tweet is created alongside unique code coinciding with that instance. Let's wake up Ellen. This has eight thousand three two lines. Who the fund is this guy? Okay, so he's like he's like, he's an FPS streamer, right, like he was like a big condrom. He he does just like whole thing because he stopped. He's the first, he's the first person shooter streamer. He plays Call of Duty, among other things. Yeah, he got banned from Twitch for doing something that like, well, I think she was she the guy who got bank he took a video and why are you asking us? I think he might be the guy who got banned for taking a video in a in a in a bathroom. I can't remember exactly. He's also okay. So one of the things he's most famous for is he's one of the people who are there's this entire cadre of like professional like Call of Duty streamers whose entire thing is that they don't want there to be ranked batchmaking and video games because they don't like playing against good players and they want to be able to stream pub stomps all the time. And they're really really mad about this and have been screaming at every game deav who has like ever existed for like multiple years now about how they suck. Like, so he's the guy video games, Yeah, he wasn't. He's also mad about people who are good at it. He's really annoying he's okay, okay, that's all. That's all. That's all we need to know about this fellow. Yeah, that's the little thing that I wrote about that I couldn't get out of my head. I don't know why. I just found that specific post in the comments to it. It is fascinating because it both shows that Musk did not have a clear game plan on what's he wants going forward into this, like the twenty how fast the twenty twenty dollar a month thing got disregarded for eight dollars just because of one tweet because Stephen King didn't like it. Yeah, it's like, it's very clear he's just bouncing from one thing to another with no clear idea on what he's doing whatsoever. And then with the with the thing about the journalist, it really shows how Ellen does not understand what verification is or why it exists, and slowly, over the course these past few weeks, has understood why it exists and just replaced it with another, with a second checkmark beneath the first check mark, so you have your blue checkmark, that you have your official checkmark. It's it's just wild that he's he's slowly, he slowly over the course of mostly thousands of will impersonating him to make to make fun of him, he realized why why verification exists. And I mean, but it's telling that like he he did not know why it exists until until it was a personal until it was a personal problem that impacted him specifically. He doesn't care about the journalists from Zimbabwe. He doesn't care that that's going to happen. It only becomes a thing when it's going to start impacting him. Take a moment of silence for for our brave posters who went out in a blaze of glory impersonating bust and get getting getting their account band who who it was? That was funny, But that's less of that. So I want to I want to talk about sat what's actually like because people have funked around and had fun. A bunch of famous people got banned making fun of Elon Musk and it was you know, the funny part of this was that damage was done. Legitimate damage was done to a couple of companies Locheed Martin and Eli Lily and had damage to their stock price done, which is at least, you know, probably temporary, although they haven't yet recovered to the heights they were before the joke. What's less temporary is that as a result of those jokes, at least one company, Eli Lily, pulled millions of dollars in adververtising off of Twitter. So the eight dollar check mark did cause real financial harm to Twitter the company, and at least kind of a temporary financial slap on the wrist to some other people. Um it's kind of unclear what the long term impacts of that will be, but Musk has delayed the rollout of the blue checkmark plan on a more on a wider basis for like a month until they figure shit out, which they may not do at the present time. What you're seeing is he's fired and is continuing to fire everybody within the company who says anything negative against him. A couple of engineers were bold enough to like critique him or argue with him on Twitter, and there have also been people within the company who have kind of pushed out corrections to some of his posts through Twitter's bird watch, uh thing of the jig that have been critical of like things he said that we're not actually true and at the moment, kind of the holy pattern what we're kind of doing is sort of watching him purge most of the old staff of Twitter, as he seems to be in the process of trying to hire new people on um And one of the most recent thing that's happened is he's sent out a letter saying basically like we all have to everybody has to go into hardcore crazy mode to make the company profitable. Uh, if you don't want to do this, you know, here's the door. You can get your three months severance. And it kind of looks like the vast majority of the remaining engineers may take the severance. There's a good reason for this. So basically the kind of position they're in the way and this is this is heavily involved in how Silicon Valley works. The way to make a lot of money in Silicon Valley is to get equity in a company before it gets huge. Right. You can also get a big salary at a company, but salaries, a big salary for a dev might be for to eight hundred thousand dollars a year if you're really really good, Whereas if you get in on the ground floor of a startup that that goes public, you could make hundreds of millions of dollars. Right, big difference in those things. Musk is asking people to work like nightmares start up amounts, but they will not have any equity or any but like if they figure out Twitter two point oh and suddenly make it a website that a billion people use, which is what he wants, um, they will not have any share in that. So a lot of devs are making the decision to like, well, I'm just going to take the severance and try to build something else. So try to get a job in another startup or like try it, because why why why wouldn't you if you were capable of making the next big social media app, why wouldn't you take the money, leave Twitter and just try to do it rather than try to do it through fucking Twitter, which is a goddamn disaster right now. Anyway, that's more or less where things are. Yeah, and I think that the everything is refreshing yourself, the people who are left at Twitter, like I don't know how the site works, Like Musk has no idea how the site works, Like you know, this is like on the sort of back end infratructure end and so like we are like we we've we've already had there. There there was there was a thing people found out where like Twitter ads and storing people's like most of the digitous people's credit cards in plain text. Um, like the site is physically falling apart. It's already started. It's probably just going to continue, and like we are probably not that far away from just watching the actual site just physically fall apart. And so you know, maybe is taking a step back from CEL. Yeah, he's looking to probably hire some competent people instead because he's realized how hard it is and it's not fun anymore. Like it's that's true, but there there's kind of a problem here, which is that like there's a lot of like a okay, like i I I really doubt Twitter as like very very good. I mean, it's documentation is probably okay, but there's a lot of people who understand how critical stuff like how critical stuff works towards has gone right, And it's not as easy as just like you can like you know, just socket in another person who's like, oh, who like knows how programming works right like you You you need the expertise from those people who had deep understandings of how it works, and like you know, maybe maybe there maybe there's enough time to sort of like fill in the gaps and like take it out of his tails. But but I don't know, especially like with you know, the number of people who are just increasingly leaving. Nobody really does know, and you know, it's one of those things we'll all we'll all watch, is this is this shakes out. I don't know if I think the whole site is going to actually fall apart um. I think the bigger I think the thing that is I think when I when we talk about it falling apart, the thing that's actually likely is that there will be increasing security breaches due to the fact that there are less people minding the store. Folks, data will be exposed. I cannot size enough. Do not attach your fucking credit card to Twitter? Yeah? Absolutely? Do you not like message? Like a lot of us use Twitter for reporting. I get d ms all the time for people who want to leak stuff, people who want to talk to me about stuff, some of which might not be legal where they are. Like, don't fucking do that on Twitter dot com anymore? Asked message someone asked for signal lost approach on mail? Do something like that? Like it? That could be very dangerous for some people. Yeah, there's a lot of ship that could go wrong as a result of this for people. Um, but I think it will probably be a series of scandals and funk ups like that, as opposed to just the site goes offline one day. Now, that said, it's not impossible that like his Elen is a guy who is shall we say, somewhat mere curial. It's possible to site will lose enough money that one day he's just like fuck it and turns it off. He does technically have that ability. That would be kind of a fascinating thing to see happen. I don't I think that's a much lower likely scenario. Well, yeah, I think it's putting it like when when when I say the site breaks, like, it's probably not going to be there's one day where it doesn't load, Like but what we when we've already been seeing like they they, I think, by accident, basically broke a bunch of how two factor authentification worked because they shut down the micro Yeah, and like they're gonna keep doing stuff like that and there's just gonna be like random stuff that just stopped working absolutely like like that that's already happening. Twitter has already been kind of a piece of shp, like even when it had an actual staff, and now it's like, yeah, it is important to note the people who were running Twitter prior to Musk taking over, we're not great at their jobs because as evidence by the fact that Twitter lost two hundred and twelve million dollars last year. Yeah. Yeah. And in the meantime, there's there's an account that documents all the dogs of the UC strike, which it's sick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that does. As this is happening to Twitter, Meta is also going through a series of devastating layoffs and as sim really impacting their functionality and pivoting very hard away from the news driven approach that they've been doing the past few years. So the two, both the two main like old guards social media sites between Facebook and Twitter, are going under significant changes. Um TikTok is of course owned by companies that are not great on your own data of privacy. Instagram is owned by Facebook, and maston is miserable. So Mastedon is We're gonna get yelled at so much by the masted On people. But I'm just look, I couldn't I couldn't figure out how masted On worked inside of thirty seconds and that is all the time I will ever devote to learning how a social media site works. I'm sorry, guys, I'm sorry. The best critique I've seen of Mastodon is that, in a part, the kind of the twenty twenty uprising happened because the video of George Floyd getting murdered got circulated so much on Twitter, like people saw they weren't able to look away from the atrocity that could never happen on Mastodon. And that's that's the biggest kind of thing for why Mastodon is not a not a a replacement for Twitter, because it will never At this point, it doesn't look like it will have the same cultural impact um that Twitter can have. Now of course that could change, who knows, And it's it's at this point, it's just it doesn't It doesn't seem to get the same thing that Twitter can do. That doesn't mean it's a failure. Like a lot of people use it. If you like it, if you find a community there, great, it's just not the same thing. It's not the same thing. Like that's all we're saying. That's why I was saying, like replacement Twitter, different things. Do you mean it's not valuable? Just like if Twitter were to turn into just a site for sex workers to make money on, there's nothing wrong with that, but it would not be fulfilling the same role that it currently does. Yeah, I mean, like I tried to overthrow my first government on Twitter. I tried to overthrow my most recent government on Twitter. Like has to be a social media service and facilitates tempting governments, Like Twitter is like unique because it's where a lot of people get their news. It's where a lot of people learn things like if the celebrity is trending, are they dead? Like you know what I mean. Like, it's just like it's where a lot of collective information is. And I don't think there's a site right now that can even even come close to how many people rely on Twitter. Just let's see. I mean, I think it's it's it's it's not that that's where people get news. It's where a certain type of influential person gets their news because a lot of people get their news via TikTok. They're just people my age of younger like like like like like a lot of people do get news on whatever they look at. The reason why twitters impactfuls because twitters where a whole bunch of people who have influence in other areas get their information from. And that's why it's that's why something that has interest, you know, in twenty twenty years is when everyone who's on TikTok is going to be in there, Like early thirties, who knows what the media landscape is gonna be, Right, it's now the most influential media. Yeah, it's it's this. It's the same thing as how like back during the French Revolution, the most influential thing in media was this one chick's coffee house, right, because it's just where all of the people that had the most people listening to them independently happened to hang out together. That's what Twitter has been for a while. Um and and and that's not always a good thing, because everyone who hangs out on Twitter gets their brain broken in a very specific way. And we're watching it continue to happen to the wealthiest man in the history of the human race, which has been a hoot. Also, I mean, and this is the thing people on Twitter talk about all the time. Twitter is like the only place in the modern world where you can actually interact with the ruling class and like make their lives. Like the only other thing you could possibly try to do in order to do that is like get you and seven your friends to try to storm their mansion and they'll probably shoot you. When I have bad When I have a bad day, I can find the air to the Habsburg Fortune and I can tweet him a picture of the dead body of his cousin who after he was shot to death for carrying out a coup in Mexico. I can do that on Twitter dot com and no other website. I will warn you that you do get banned for certain and dead dictator memes. I've had a few Mussolini bands, but otherwise, Yeah, it's a glorious website. It is. Yeah, I'm just enjoying pictures that people have responded to Nancy Pelosi's retirement thing with right now and it's just you guys click the bottom link as an absolute banger. Yeah, unfortunately I saw that before. That's one of the most that is that is like that looks like a horror horror movie picture. No, God, So imagine if like you were doing a horror movie where like people are in a haunted house and there's like a demon in the walls, and it at some point like pulls out like a man size demon comes out of the wall and pulls a person into the wall. It looks like that, but the demon in the wall is instead in a copy of the Constitution, and he's cradling Nancy Pelosi. But she has the body of a twenty year old female college student. Oh god, it is well, I feel like that's that's maybe we should break this down. We have, you know, I think I think we have gazed into the Twitter abyss for long enough. It's been about this is enough. We won't I promise we won't talk about Twitter like this for another several weeks. Won't be here next time. But yeah, we're We're all going to log off this and then go on Twitter. I'm not. I have to. I have to do my job. I'm gonna write about Sam Bankman freed. Happy Christmas, eve Bucks. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here. Updated monthly at cool Zone media dot com slash Sources thanks for listening.

I'm beautiful. That's how we start this episode of our professional podcast that makes it pays all of our rent. This is it could Happen here, a podcast about things falling apart, and today we're talking about Twitter because nothing embodies falling apart quite like Twitter. Um we have on the show today, Garrison Davis, Chris Sharene, James, everybody, the whole crew, except for the people who aren't here. They're not here, but I hate them, Yeah, I don't hate them. How's everybody, don't we all great? I just woke up, had my coffee scrolled on Twitter for an hour, so I'm ready to go this. This, this has been, This has been legitimately the best three weeks that we have had on Twitter since like like two. I feel bad for all the people who have like left because they're missing Twitter. So first off, I want to say, we're not gonna try We're gonna try not to get too into the weeds here if you're not a Twitter person, and most people are not Twitter people. The reason that number one, I want to start by explaining why we think this is worth getting into, which is that like Twitter as an undeniable command of like global news discourse it's where all of the journalists hang out, it's where a significant number of the politicians and wealthy business people hang out, and all of us are being broken by it, like it's one big opium den that we are all like engaging in an addiction that is destroying our brains inside. Um. It's not good for anyone, but it's undeniably important. And since Elon Musk took over, things have been things have been quite wild. So we're going to give an update on kind of some of the stuff that's been happening in Twitter at the end here, but I want to read a little lessay I wrote, just kind of looking at mostly a single post Musk made and some of the responses to it that I think says a lot about where we are as a species right now. On October, shortly after taking control of Twitter from its former shareholders, Elon Musk went on a frenzy of what you might call ill considered emphetamine derived tweets about his ideas for how the site should function. At one point, he noted that twenty dollars a month seemed like a fair price for people to pay to get or keep blue check marks. There was even talk of twenty dollars a month being the price to use Twitter at all and pay walling the entire site. Now, a lot of people thought this was bug funk, especially since like Hbo doesn't cost that much and it's and it's got and door on it. You can watch just Disney, both of both of the streaming services that I watch I stole from you Garrison, So really it's an incredible deal. So everyone made fun of the fact that Elon was suggesting this, and no one had a bigger laugh than Stephen King. Now, Stephen King, if you're not aware, is worth pretty close to a billion dollars. He is an unbelievably wealthy man, and like he has like actual money, not like stock made up money, that is cash. He has hundreds of millions of dollars in cash because people like his He has more like actual money than he probably liquid assets. He's a very liquid man because he wrote The Shining and the Stand and cou Joe and that's a clown book. So many he writes a new book every week. He's the only man who has successfully turned a painkiller addiction into putting out a best selling novel every single month. What a hero anyway, he tweeted, quote, twenty dollars a month to keep my blue check. Fuck that they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I'm gone, like in ron now. In addition to being the kind to wordplay for which Stephen King has become rightly famous, the reason that he got kind of piste off is actually sensible. Obviously, twenty dollars means nothing to someone with his kind of money, but he's not wrong about his central argument, which is that like Twitter ought to be paying people like him. He has nearly seven million followers, and he tweets very regularly. Massive accounts like Stephen King's are not Twitter's customers. They are the business itself. It is the product. I want to quote now from a report in Reuters. Quote, these heavy tweeters account for less than ten percent of monthly overall users, but generate of all tweets and half of global revenue. Heavy tweeters have been an absolute decline since the pandemic began. A Twitter researcher wrote in an internal document titled where did the Tweeters go? Now? Sonny, It's like Instagram or whatever. Once you're like, have a lot of followers, you can make money. So I think Twitter is different that way. It is. I I am the only person in the history of Twitter who was actually turned being a ship poster insway lucrative professional career. I am the only one. Everyone else that is drill drill was already like in in this like drivels already. I think, like in the scene doing stuff like well they done something has something to do with home stuck. But the point is that the people like Stephen King are what makes Twitter profitable. The idea that like they owe the company money to be able to tweet is kind of absolutely absurd, and in addition to that, like it it feeds into a serious problem the site is having before Elon bought it. They're they're they're they're attempting to answer the question of like, why are these people who are responsible for most of our money tweeting less? Because it's it's costing us like it is. There's a reason why Twitter has been on a profit down slope lately. Um the only profitable years the company has had I should know, we're two thousand eighteen and two thousand nineteen, in which they were doing reasonably well financially, and since the pandemics started, Twitter has reliably lost hundreds of millions of dollars per year. This research was which was attempting to answer the question why beat at concluded quote cryptocurrency and not safe for work content, which includes nudity and pornography, are the highest growing topics of interest among English speaking heavy users. The report found at the same time, interest in news, sports, and entertainment is waning among those users. Tweets on those topics, which have helped Twitter burnishing images the world's digital town square, as Musk once called it, are also the most desirable for advertisers. So basically, the things that advertisers like to see ads next to are becoming less popular on Twitter, and ship that is poisoned for advertisers has become more popular. Now. This is a problem for Musk because he loves crypto shilling, which is a huge issue for everyone who isn't a crypto weirdo. Um, there are some opportunities. One of the things that I thought wasn't a bad idea was Musk suggested ways in which to like monetize the site so sex workers could more effectively monetize their followings, which is a way Twitter might be able to make more money now is that likely to make the company money in excess of what they would lose in advertising for becoming known as the Fox site. Probably not, Probably broadly speaking of bad idea. Um So, in addition to Musk's outright hatred of journalists in reporting, it seems like just his general vibes might not be great for bringing back the advertisers he seems to be personally having fine. He seems to be personally inclined to like go after the things and support the things that are directly poisoned for Twitter's bottom line, which is fascinating for a guy who's spending forty four billion dollars on the side. Can can we can we mention for a second, by the way, the reason he spent forty billion dollars on the site was because he bought the stocks, the sites shares for a meme price that someone sugested on Twitter. Yes, it was like fifty four dollars and fifty four dollars and twenty cents, so there's a four twenty. Yeah, this is this is why you sent forty four billion dollars on this And he previously it's worth noting he previously did that with Twitter stock or with um Tesla stuff. He attempted to take Tesla private for four dollars to share heavily for that one. Because that's because it's very yes, exactly, because that was that was very illegal, we think, very not that funny. Yeah, it's also worth noting that like the one thing that he actually has he has created, right, he didn't invent Tesla, like he didn't even his is his reply guys. No, his his reply guys are like his unique asset, and and he's trying to price him out of being his reply guys. The cult of personality stuff, yeah, yeah, but like that's largely built on Twitter, right, like his the whole cult around him, well and read it. But yeah, and just like the fact that like people think the genius x y Z whatever. Yeah, that is that's too big a tapping for today's episode and recently we'll see. But you know, we're not talking today about like Musk's broadly speaking, why Musk is a con man. Well, we'll talk about that. We've talked about that on plenty of other occasions. Nor is this supposed to be an exhaustive explanation for why Musk's Twitter is likely to fall apart. We don't have the end of that story yet. So instead, what I want to do is review a single tweet and particularly the responses to that tweet, because I think it is hugely interesting and kind of an important cultural artifact. So the tweet was a response by Musk to the Stephen King tweet that I I read earlier. Right King being like, I'm not gonna pay this, Musk responded simply, we need to pay the bills. Somehow Twitter cannot rely entirely on advertisers. How about eight dollars? Now, this is also very funny because you and you're like, whoa, there's nothing in there. There's nothing, but it's it's just bouncing around like a fucking bb and a goddamn dryer. Um. So the first comments to this response, or what you'd expect, there's a mix of anti Musk lib types laughing at his bad business sense, mocking the idea of making Twitter's most valuable users pay for the site. Um, you've got your Musk defenders insisting that Blue checks some sort of out of touch elite, which is one of my favorite bits of deranged right wing culture that like there's some sort of like yeah verse s I this there's like a there's an old left Twitter joke like like like literally it was like there was there was a running series of jokes about like the blue check bourgeoisie and like, and then somehow all of these people became convinced it was real and through a process that like I cannot even begin to understand the the process, and this is critical, is that you cannot tell jokes on Twitter dot com. That's true. Um, that that is that is the actual process, and that is the Yeah, that's that's that's what's happening here. So a representative Musk defender responses this comment by Douche Canoe Magoo and everyone ha ha ha ha ha. Dude worth five million who wants to tax the ricks rich can't play twenty dollars ha ha. Hey elon Musk, I'll play this pay this loser's twenty dollars a month. Now. I looked into it, and this guy is an anti vaxer with thirty four followers. If you're if you're curious on the lip side, you've got guys like Keith Olberman's subtweeting Musks to try and use like numbers in math to show that this business plan which was never a business real business plan isn't going to make money. The first interesting response there was a few comments down from Keith by a journalist named Hopewell Chinono. Good morning, Elon Musk. For a lot of journalists in Africa, verification has helped us to not fall victim to state tactics to use our names to spread propaganda. I have been to jail three times inside six months for exposing corruption. Few African journalists will afford the U S twenty dollars and attached to this tweet where images from Too Guardian articles about Hope Well. I'm going to quote from one now. Nno posted on his Twitter account that police had taken him from his house and said that they were charging him with communicating falsehoods. The arrest comes after Chennono tweeted that police had beaten an infant to death while enforcing COVID nineteen lockdown rules this week. Police later said the information was false. Before the latest arrest, Hinono was out on bail and separate charges of inciting violence as after he voiced support for an anti government protest in July, and also on contemptive court charges for allegedly claiming corruption within the country's National Prosecution Agency. Chanono is one of Zimbabwe's most prominent critics of President Emerson. I'm not gonna be able to pronounce that last name administration, accusing it of corruption and human rights abuses. The government denies the charges. Now, Hope Well is a Harvard Fellow. He is an award winning journalist and I had no idea this guy existed prior to this tweet. Uh. He is an extremely courageous person who, from everything I can read, is reporting on corruption within the Zimbabwean government has been very influential, recently led to the sacking of the very corrupt Health Minister. I would not have heard of this man without Twitter. He would not have had a voice capable of reaching a large number of people without Twitter. It's possible those Guardian articles about him and his struggle would not exist if it weren't for the prominence of his Twitter account. Um, and you know, it's also worth noting that if Twitter weren't the site that it is, he never would have had a chance to make his concerns public anywhere close to the CEO of that company. Many things about this interaction cry out for the very best about Twitter. The smallest and probably most valuable of the major social media websites, and at least a social level, we all call it the hell site, and a huge part of Twitter culture is despising it. But moments like this really do make a lot of the bullshit worthwhile. In the articles hope Will attached to his post, he's wearing a red and white striped shirt. The top response to Hopewell's replied a musk is by Jason Roeberg. A musk reply by Guy one, American News and Fox News commenter. He writes, why did they dress you like American Waldo, I'll pay for your subscription. Hopo replies, that is very kind of you. That is prison uniform. My imprisonment was triggered by tweets exposing state corruption. The ruling political elites use captured state institutions to punish analyst who exposed the looting of public funds um which I don't know. Another perfectly characteristic Twitter response and being like look at the way he's dressed and being like, yeah, that's a prison uniform. I was I just got out of prison for when I was doing amazing criminalism. Yeah, it's just very It says a lot there's a lot going on here. Yeah. Have you come across his I guess, I hope, Well, you know, no dot com which is not his website. No, Jesus Mark God, is it something? Is that like a government thing? Yes, it's a government I hope. But you don't know. He's very deceptives. He's the liar and dishonest person. Yeah. Yeah, so just wow, this is an incredible story website. Look at this. They've done some work. I love. The background is like a boat sailing in the star sol to see what the fuck they They're not doing their finest work over there. The first section is the title in all caps is and I quote Daddy Hope story that his Twitter handled that. Okay, okay, his residence looks like a sex he then apparently okay, yeah, I don't know what they look like, but you could like it's it's obvious, like he's obviously like disinformation about him personally. It's a big fucking issue for this guy. Yeah. Dot com is just a great example of live verification on Twitter is an important it's a wonderful example of that. Garrison. Now, the responses to this guy continued to be pretty amazing. Another fun reply was simply I thought that in Zimbabwe they arrest only white folks. Oh, has that person got a picture of like a some kind of white guy very short shorts? And yeah, yeah he's some some some serious Rhodesian ship on that dude's timeline. Now, I want to note most of the responses to Hopeful are very positive um and all of the negative replies have multiple people attacking the people who are going after hope Well and defending him. Because Twitter works the way that it does, though this increases engagement provides an algorithmic boost to everybody involved. The whole situation in his replies is kind of as bleak and hopeless as Hopell's initial reply is itself hopeful. Scrolling down further, the applies to Musk's tweet. We get this gym from the skin doctor, and this is somebody just like tweeting his his advice to Ellen. How about privileged classes like white straight men and women upper cast Hindus pay a hundred dollars for their blue ticks. You keep eight dollars each from it and pay the rest ninety two dollars to oppressed classes blue tickers like rich communists, LGBT doll its feminists, left journals, vegans, peta fair. No, this one is quite the response that it has. It has seventy dred likes, which makes sense because the skin Doctor has more than half million followers. He is a Hindu dermatologist from Flower Mount, Texas who posts like pro Hindu fascist content Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. He also posts right wing sketch comedy videos about how a modern Titanic sinking wouldn't put women and children first because of wokeness. Um. He's an incredible account. I recommend following the skin Doctor. Yeah, this is the world that are our wants. Yeah, and this is like yeah. The responses of his to his tweet are another perfect microcosm of Twitter, because a big part of it is he has this like long fight with another right winger who doesn't get the joke and attacks him for being woke, and also gets thousands of yes, it's so good. Um, and it's probably you know, fair for me to talk just a little bit about the liberal lefty you know must reply guys, the ones who reply it to one of his posts, but attacking him. So let's talk about Eric Davis, a verified candidate for the North Carolina Statehouse with fifty four followers. Um, not a lot of followers. He is a Democrat. Uh, and he seems to be trying to draft off of Musk's replies to increase his own popularity. And that this was you know, prior to the election. Uh, we should check in on how Eric Davis did in North Carolina for him. And then I just love that, like all his replying just landed with people like it's very funny. Yeah, his reply shows a total lack of understanding about what's happening with Twitter. Quote. Wait, so Twitter was perfectly fine before the supposedly richest man took control, but now that it has even more money and got rid of many of the workers, so it's even cheaper to sustain now it can't survive without paying That is part logic for the Musk fan base. I guess, which is completely wrong. Twitter hasn't was not making money. Twitter was losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year and now makes even less money. But anyway, Um, it's got three hundred and seventy four likes, which is one of the biggest tweets this particular candidate has had, by the way, that that is h he know, Wait, what are we think the same guy? Did he win North Caroline his school board? Oh no, no, no for school. But in the general election he got eight thousand votes and lost by how much? He lost by by fifty two percent of the vote and got seventy six in his Yeah, if only, if only fully he tweeted more, if only he'd owned Elon Musko a little bit harder via tweet, that would have flung things. God, that's funny, so further down as a political cartoon, and I do not understand it, but I am. I'm going to force you all to to observe it. I could look at it like I can try to explain it. Drop it in the chat. So that's the that's the political cartoon. Okay. So it's the meme of the guy who's who's walking with his girlfriend and it's looking at the other woman, except all of their faces are cartoon faces of Elon Mutton, Elon Musk's girlfriend. It's wearing a Twitter shirt and he's looking over at a girl with a red TikTok. What does this mean? That's a hard question, Robert. You we could do a whole semester about what this means. Yeah, distracted by Aiden looking at Ellen. It's like ignoring Twitter because you're looking over at the red pill. I guess I don't know you're looking at Also, you like you. I don't think it's supposed to meet anything. They all have his face, which makes it so much more complicated. It's a lot going on there. I'm so happy that none of us have been on the internet enough to understand what this means. I'm so proud of us. And lastly, there's my very favorite reply from someone called doctor Disrespect with a staggering two point four million followers. Do you not know who this is? He's some video game player he wears like a plate carrier while he's playing video games, and also public sometimes Oh my god. Anyway, yeah, he tweets this to musk. Let the two X give you a thought. Allow face scan slash retinal scan into a blue check mode, similar to iPhone unlock through face scan, but in this case only while scan is active. A tweet is created alongside unique code coinciding with that instance. Let's wake up Ellen. This has eight thousand three two lines. Who the fund is this guy? Okay, so he's like he's like, he's an FPS streamer, right, like he was like a big condrom. He he does just like whole thing because he stopped. He's the first, he's the first person shooter streamer. He plays Call of Duty, among other things. Yeah, he got banned from Twitch for doing something that like, well, I think she was she the guy who got bank he took a video and why are you asking us? I think he might be the guy who got banned for taking a video in a in a in a bathroom. I can't remember exactly. He's also okay. So one of the things he's most famous for is he's one of the people who are there's this entire cadre of like professional like Call of Duty streamers whose entire thing is that they don't want there to be ranked batchmaking and video games because they don't like playing against good players and they want to be able to stream pub stomps all the time. And they're really really mad about this and have been screaming at every game deav who has like ever existed for like multiple years now about how they suck. Like, so he's the guy video games, Yeah, he wasn't. He's also mad about people who are good at it. He's really annoying he's okay, okay, that's all. That's all. That's all we need to know about this fellow. Yeah, that's the little thing that I wrote about that I couldn't get out of my head. I don't know why. I just found that specific post in the comments to it. It is fascinating because it both shows that Musk did not have a clear game plan on what's he wants going forward into this, like the twenty how fast the twenty twenty dollar a month thing got disregarded for eight dollars just because of one tweet because Stephen King didn't like it. Yeah, it's like, it's very clear he's just bouncing from one thing to another with no clear idea on what he's doing whatsoever. And then with the with the thing about the journalist, it really shows how Ellen does not understand what verification is or why it exists, and slowly, over the course these past few weeks, has understood why it exists and just replaced it with another, with a second checkmark beneath the first check mark, so you have your blue checkmark, that you have your official checkmark. It's it's just wild that he's he's slowly, he slowly over the course of mostly thousands of will impersonating him to make to make fun of him, he realized why why verification exists. And I mean, but it's telling that like he he did not know why it exists until until it was a personal until it was a personal problem that impacted him specifically. He doesn't care about the journalists from Zimbabwe. He doesn't care that that's going to happen. It only becomes a thing when it's going to start impacting him. Take a moment of silence for for our brave posters who went out in a blaze of glory impersonating bust and get getting getting their account band who who it was? That was funny, But that's less of that. So I want to I want to talk about sat what's actually like because people have funked around and had fun. A bunch of famous people got banned making fun of Elon Musk and it was you know, the funny part of this was that damage was done. Legitimate damage was done to a couple of companies Locheed Martin and Eli Lily and had damage to their stock price done, which is at least, you know, probably temporary, although they haven't yet recovered to the heights they were before the joke. What's less temporary is that as a result of those jokes, at least one company, Eli Lily, pulled millions of dollars in adververtising off of Twitter. So the eight dollar check mark did cause real financial harm to Twitter the company, and at least kind of a temporary financial slap on the wrist to some other people. Um it's kind of unclear what the long term impacts of that will be, but Musk has delayed the rollout of the blue checkmark plan on a more on a wider basis for like a month until they figure shit out, which they may not do at the present time. What you're seeing is he's fired and is continuing to fire everybody within the company who says anything negative against him. A couple of engineers were bold enough to like critique him or argue with him on Twitter, and there have also been people within the company who have kind of pushed out corrections to some of his posts through Twitter's bird watch, uh thing of the jig that have been critical of like things he said that we're not actually true and at the moment, kind of the holy pattern what we're kind of doing is sort of watching him purge most of the old staff of Twitter, as he seems to be in the process of trying to hire new people on um And one of the most recent thing that's happened is he's sent out a letter saying basically like we all have to everybody has to go into hardcore crazy mode to make the company profitable. Uh, if you don't want to do this, you know, here's the door. You can get your three months severance. And it kind of looks like the vast majority of the remaining engineers may take the severance. There's a good reason for this. So basically the kind of position they're in the way and this is this is heavily involved in how Silicon Valley works. The way to make a lot of money in Silicon Valley is to get equity in a company before it gets huge. Right. You can also get a big salary at a company, but salaries, a big salary for a dev might be for to eight hundred thousand dollars a year if you're really really good, Whereas if you get in on the ground floor of a startup that that goes public, you could make hundreds of millions of dollars. Right, big difference in those things. Musk is asking people to work like nightmares start up amounts, but they will not have any equity or any but like if they figure out Twitter two point oh and suddenly make it a website that a billion people use, which is what he wants, um, they will not have any share in that. So a lot of devs are making the decision to like, well, I'm just going to take the severance and try to build something else. So try to get a job in another startup or like try it, because why why why wouldn't you if you were capable of making the next big social media app, why wouldn't you take the money, leave Twitter and just try to do it rather than try to do it through fucking Twitter, which is a goddamn disaster right now. Anyway, that's more or less where things are. Yeah, and I think that the everything is refreshing yourself, the people who are left at Twitter, like I don't know how the site works, Like Musk has no idea how the site works, Like you know, this is like on the sort of back end infratructure end and so like we are like we we've we've already had there. There there was there was a thing people found out where like Twitter ads and storing people's like most of the digitous people's credit cards in plain text. Um, like the site is physically falling apart. It's already started. It's probably just going to continue, and like we are probably not that far away from just watching the actual site just physically fall apart. And so you know, maybe is taking a step back from CEL. Yeah, he's looking to probably hire some competent people instead because he's realized how hard it is and it's not fun anymore. Like it's that's true, but there there's kind of a problem here, which is that like there's a lot of like a okay, like i I I really doubt Twitter as like very very good. I mean, it's documentation is probably okay, but there's a lot of people who understand how critical stuff like how critical stuff works towards has gone right, And it's not as easy as just like you can like you know, just socket in another person who's like, oh, who like knows how programming works right like you You you need the expertise from those people who had deep understandings of how it works, and like you know, maybe maybe there maybe there's enough time to sort of like fill in the gaps and like take it out of his tails. But but I don't know, especially like with you know, the number of people who are just increasingly leaving. Nobody really does know, and you know, it's one of those things we'll all we'll all watch, is this is this shakes out. I don't know if I think the whole site is going to actually fall apart um. I think the bigger I think the thing that is I think when I when we talk about it falling apart, the thing that's actually likely is that there will be increasing security breaches due to the fact that there are less people minding the store. Folks, data will be exposed. I cannot size enough. Do not attach your fucking credit card to Twitter? Yeah? Absolutely? Do you not like message? Like a lot of us use Twitter for reporting. I get d ms all the time for people who want to leak stuff, people who want to talk to me about stuff, some of which might not be legal where they are. Like, don't fucking do that on Twitter dot com anymore? Asked message someone asked for signal lost approach on mail? Do something like that? Like it? That could be very dangerous for some people. Yeah, there's a lot of ship that could go wrong as a result of this for people. Um, but I think it will probably be a series of scandals and funk ups like that, as opposed to just the site goes offline one day. Now, that said, it's not impossible that like his Elen is a guy who is shall we say, somewhat mere curial. It's possible to site will lose enough money that one day he's just like fuck it and turns it off. He does technically have that ability. That would be kind of a fascinating thing to see happen. I don't I think that's a much lower likely scenario. Well, yeah, I think it's putting it like when when when I say the site breaks, like, it's probably not going to be there's one day where it doesn't load, Like but what we when we've already been seeing like they they, I think, by accident, basically broke a bunch of how two factor authentification worked because they shut down the micro Yeah, and like they're gonna keep doing stuff like that and there's just gonna be like random stuff that just stopped working absolutely like like that that's already happening. Twitter has already been kind of a piece of shp, like even when it had an actual staff, and now it's like, yeah, it is important to note the people who were running Twitter prior to Musk taking over, we're not great at their jobs because as evidence by the fact that Twitter lost two hundred and twelve million dollars last year. Yeah. Yeah. And in the meantime, there's there's an account that documents all the dogs of the UC strike, which it's sick. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that does. As this is happening to Twitter, Meta is also going through a series of devastating layoffs and as sim really impacting their functionality and pivoting very hard away from the news driven approach that they've been doing the past few years. So the two, both the two main like old guards social media sites between Facebook and Twitter, are going under significant changes. Um TikTok is of course owned by companies that are not great on your own data of privacy. Instagram is owned by Facebook, and maston is miserable. So Mastedon is We're gonna get yelled at so much by the masted On people. But I'm just look, I couldn't I couldn't figure out how masted On worked inside of thirty seconds and that is all the time I will ever devote to learning how a social media site works. I'm sorry, guys, I'm sorry. The best critique I've seen of Mastodon is that, in a part, the kind of the twenty twenty uprising happened because the video of George Floyd getting murdered got circulated so much on Twitter, like people saw they weren't able to look away from the atrocity that could never happen on Mastodon. And that's that's the biggest kind of thing for why Mastodon is not a not a a replacement for Twitter, because it will never At this point, it doesn't look like it will have the same cultural impact um that Twitter can have. Now of course that could change, who knows, And it's it's at this point, it's just it doesn't It doesn't seem to get the same thing that Twitter can do. That doesn't mean it's a failure. Like a lot of people use it. If you like it, if you find a community there, great, it's just not the same thing. It's not the same thing. Like that's all we're saying. That's why I was saying, like replacement Twitter, different things. Do you mean it's not valuable? Just like if Twitter were to turn into just a site for sex workers to make money on, there's nothing wrong with that, but it would not be fulfilling the same role that it currently does. Yeah, I mean, like I tried to overthrow my first government on Twitter. I tried to overthrow my most recent government on Twitter. Like has to be a social media service and facilitates tempting governments, Like Twitter is like unique because it's where a lot of people get their news. It's where a lot of people learn things like if the celebrity is trending, are they dead? Like you know what I mean. Like, it's just like it's where a lot of collective information is. And I don't think there's a site right now that can even even come close to how many people rely on Twitter. Just let's see. I mean, I think it's it's it's it's not that that's where people get news. It's where a certain type of influential person gets their news because a lot of people get their news via TikTok. They're just people my age of younger like like like like like a lot of people do get news on whatever they look at. The reason why twitters impactfuls because twitters where a whole bunch of people who have influence in other areas get their information from. And that's why it's that's why something that has interest, you know, in twenty twenty years is when everyone who's on TikTok is going to be in there, Like early thirties, who knows what the media landscape is gonna be, Right, it's now the most influential media. Yeah, it's it's this. It's the same thing as how like back during the French Revolution, the most influential thing in media was this one chick's coffee house, right, because it's just where all of the people that had the most people listening to them independently happened to hang out together. That's what Twitter has been for a while. Um and and and that's not always a good thing, because everyone who hangs out on Twitter gets their brain broken in a very specific way. And we're watching it continue to happen to the wealthiest man in the history of the human race, which has been a hoot. Also, I mean, and this is the thing people on Twitter talk about all the time. Twitter is like the only place in the modern world where you can actually interact with the ruling class and like make their lives. Like the only other thing you could possibly try to do in order to do that is like get you and seven your friends to try to storm their mansion and they'll probably shoot you. When I have bad When I have a bad day, I can find the air to the Habsburg Fortune and I can tweet him a picture of the dead body of his cousin who after he was shot to death for carrying out a coup in Mexico. I can do that on Twitter dot com and no other website. I will warn you that you do get banned for certain and dead dictator memes. I've had a few Mussolini bands, but otherwise, Yeah, it's a glorious website. It is. Yeah, I'm just enjoying pictures that people have responded to Nancy Pelosi's retirement thing with right now and it's just you guys click the bottom link as an absolute banger. Yeah, unfortunately I saw that before. That's one of the most that is that is like that looks like a horror horror movie picture. No, God, So imagine if like you were doing a horror movie where like people are in a haunted house and there's like a demon in the walls, and it at some point like pulls out like a man size demon comes out of the wall and pulls a person into the wall. It looks like that, but the demon in the wall is instead in a copy of the Constitution, and he's cradling Nancy Pelosi. But she has the body of a twenty year old female college student. Oh god, it is well, I feel like that's that's maybe we should break this down. We have, you know, I think I think we have gazed into the Twitter abyss for long enough. It's been about this is enough. We won't I promise we won't talk about Twitter like this for another several weeks. Won't be here next time. But yeah, we're We're all going to log off this and then go on Twitter. I'm not. I have to. I have to do my job. I'm gonna write about Sam Bankman freed. Happy Christmas, eve Bucks. It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It could Happen Here. Updated monthly at cool Zone media dot com slash Sources thanks for listening.