So long, Musk! The great social media migration
Finally, people are seeing sense and the fact Twitter (let’s not call it X – that’s just plain silly) is a septic hell hole. But is a move to Threads REALLY the future?
Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!
The murky waters of social media have been shooketh this week. SHOOKETH, I tell ya.
People appear to have finally realised Twitter is a rank melting pot for racist, homophobic and transphobic comments, corrupt politicians and people who generally want to incite violence on the streets of the UK. There’s always been so much research about how the main point of social media is to make people angry. Well, it’s working.
I guess case and point, the recent riots in the UK where a bunch of drunken yobs decided they could ‘fix’ the country by tracking down anybody who looked vaguely like an immigrant and beat the shit out of them. Yeh, cool idea you guys.
These yobs mainly used Telegram to gather their idiot troops, spread their poisonous racist opinions and caused an all-out mess for a night or two recently. The reality, they were just drunken twats on a mission to punch things. And Twitter wasn’t the leading force behind it all. Let’s face it, it all felt very eighties playground. But it shocked UK residents and people started to feel unsafe in their homes and on the streets. Like the UK wasn’t their home.
Listening to this week’s Miss Me podcast Miquita Oliver made a valid point following a conversation with her wondrous mother, the chef Andi Oliver, who described last week’s riots as something anybody black had to deal with throughout the eighties. And she’s right, isn’t she? I know from my youth and growing up then, the corner shop was the “paki shop” (no matter where the owners came from), black people were continually described in derogatory phrasing by white people (at least where I grew up) and gays were poofs or queers and a laughing stock. I felt that tragic eighties energy in a huge way as a young gay kid. Even my own father would take the piss out of gays in the worst ways and I’d just have to sit there listening and nodding along as a closeted teenager.
Let’s face it, t’was a hard place to grow up for anybody who was ‘different’ from the bog-standard straight white person. It felt like they were the only racial scenario deemed ‘safe’ and truly British. It’s crazy how far we’ve come in acceptance when you reflect on growing up in the eighties.
The truth of the matter is the UK has always been an incredible melting pot of so many brilliant faiths, colours, cultures and nationalities. It’s something we should be proud of – not standing against. Do these jerk offs not realise without thousands of hard working ‘immigrants’ the NHS would literally fall apart if we “sent them back”? Not to mention the fact so many of these so-called immigrants were actually born here and have lived in the UK throughout their lives. They are British. It’s laughable how misguided these twerps have been with their mission to disrupt our British culture.
But all of this racism talk IRL is basically what’s transferred to social media in the past few years. It’s a terrible place to go visit these days – especially Twitter. The amount of misinformation is unreal and that is before we even step into our new ‘AI era’ which is gathering speed by the day. Imagine how tricky that’s going to be to navigate? It’s all really scary.
Another thing I can’t stand about Twitter is the fact it feels so unmonitored. People can pretty much say anything they want, and it will be there for at least 24 hours before people complain, it’s investigated, and it’s taken down. The damage is fully done by then. Case in point during these riotous weeks.
My relationship with social media has been an interesting one. I’m close to two weeks into an Instagram detox and it feels good. I’m away on holiday and I’ve read three whole books. Joyous scenes. My head is clear, I’m not comparing other people’s lives with my own and generally I’m so much happier focusing on myself. I’m not going to lie though, the addiction to the Instie scroll is real. Damn it, that shit is like coming off the fags. Ooooof.
I realised how much I was struggling with Twitter years ago now. What’s annoying is I didn’t listen to my own ‘practice what you preach’ methodology and just stop using it. It’s not mandatory to be on there and I should have done that ages ago. I was a big twerp.
A year or so ago, I deleted my account – and lost 58,000 followers in the process – because I just didn’t like where Twitter was going. I built my followers from the day dot by being a showbiz journalist on Fleet Street. People relied on me for the gossip and back then I would deliver. I had plenty of opinions on anything and everything - people I didn’t even know. I was probably fairly mean at times too. Then when I left the papers and magazines as a writer and I wasn’t doing the showbiz thing anymore I didn't see the point in tweeting. It just felt naff. Who gave a shit what a former showbiz hound thought? I literally didn’t need to have an opinion on any of that anymore.
I managed to keep my name and handle on the platform by coming back on 24 hours later (there was a doctor in the States called Dean Piper who regularly would ask to have my name for his handle – “No thanks, Laters” I’d reply) and nowadays I have 300 or so followers. I don’t need validation as a human by the follower numbers I have and anybody who cares about this needs a good hard think about who they are. I literally couldn’t give a shit. Especially not about a platform like Twitter.
But then this week something happened on what felt like a global scale, the penny dropped with how gross and septic Twitter has become and people started to migrate to Threads – the Instagram-attached Twitter-esque social media platform that launched just over a year ago. I guess people have finally grown tired of Musk in a big way. Now, admittedly when Threads launched, I’d been excited – maybe it was going to be a happier space. The reality, Twitter users stuck with Musk and didn’t flock to using it regularly and it was very quickly very boring. Very little interaction, not much interesting content and just a bit flat. But this week everybody seems to be on it. They’re migrating in their thousands and introducing themselves with their own cute little “I’m fresh off the boat” intros.
Now, let’s be honest – Threads is not without problems. Personally, my algorithm is the pits on there. My timeline seems to just be full of people I’m not even following. Loads of lonely gays, gays trying to be funny, fitness gays and generally gays. I’m a very ‘ungay’ person in reality so I don’t get where that’s all come from. I have my camp moments and love gay telly. But I’m probably in the “must try harder” category of gays. I should do pride more; I should probably have more gay friends, and I should be working harder for the queer community. I don’t know, maybe I should. Maybe I’m just too old to suddenly change tactics on my own personal algorithm. I’m just not a person who feels I have to be part of a crowd to make myself happy. I just like who I like. Life feels too short to be constantly fighting. Maybe Madonna’s line about ignorance being bliss has been an influence. Or maybe my love of Madonna and that community has been my big homage to the queer community? ANYWAY, I digress…
So, what could improve our dearest new social media phenomenon, Threads? Well, please can things just go in time and date order with the people I follow. Not all these dumb suggestions. I think everybody will universally agree that we love having our social in chronological order. We don’t want to miss things from our pals. Without that element – it all sucks.
The best thing about Threads? So far it’s so much more positive! And some of the ‘famous’ people I really like are migrating there in a big way. Huzzah. You really realise how much doom and gloom is coming from a platform like Twitter when you compare it to Threads. All that bad news, all the bad politics and opinions, all the twats like Musk, Farage and Morgan (and the rest) endlessly annoying your timeline. It also just feels like a place that is continually wanting to work out how to make more of a financial gain from people. Yucky. Sorry Musk, you bought what you bought and you’ve fucked it up. Monumentally.
I hope the penny has dropped for the OG Twitter generation (let’s face to it we are all ‘old’ with regards to our social media habits) that we have a choice and if something isn’t working for our soul then pack your bags and leave. Twitter - as a platform - is full of anger, hate and horrible opinions. It’s mostly there for politicians and terribly bored humans (and BOTS) to use for their own gain. I don’t want to be a pawn in their games. To be frank, these days I was only mostly following people who work in ocean and river conservation and that alone was becoming far too depressing to read about on a daily basis on how much we are fucking up the planet’s water.
So I’ve stepped away from Twitter with what appears to be a lot of other people. Crowd migration times! And we are going to give something new a good go.
Follow me on Threads if you fancy it and let’s hope it remains a nice positive, upbeat and educational social media platform that does some good for the world. It has a chance to be doing some good. So for now, I’m giving it a chance.
Vive la Threads!
P.S. I’ll be updating on my Greek Adventures soon once I’ve done the second pit stop. All is going exceedingly well here. I’m full to the brim of moussaka. Happy days!
Thank you! Really resonated ❤️
Really good and lots of sense Dean. Thank you :)