For the Love of God
I’m bored of Twitter. I’m bored of everyone’s posts. I’m bored of their comments, replies, quote retweets. Everything man. None of it feels fun anymore.
Was it ever fun though?
Definitely. And it still occasionally is, rare as it might be. There are legendary days on Twitter that feel like there’s a bird in the classroom. Like that one weekend when that thing happened to that insurance guy, only a couple days after the “find Luigi” gimmick account got big. The stars can align, and when they do, the posts people end up making should be considered genuine art.
But when it’s an average weekday, all I see are quote retweets that make me angry as hell. Worst of all is when the algorithm picks up that you are mildly interested in a tweet and proceeds to incessantly show you every quote retweet that it got for the next 7 years. Sometimes, it’s great. Like when SpaceDev drew Frieren from a low angle and was QRTd by every artist known to man giving it their best try. However, most of the time, it’s usually some bullshit. Oh, and don’t forget the gimmick accounts that post the same shit you’ve seen for the billionth time with no credit to the original creator. For each one I block, two more show up.
Perhaps the answer here is, “Well then, don’t look at the ‘for you’ page. Just look at the posts of the people you’re following.” An excellent suggestion. Only problem is, when I do that, all I see are going-live tweets, links to other websites, QRTs of the same garbage I mentioned above, and incessant yelling at clouds. Most commonly, there are the bottom-of-the-barrel tweets. The ones that feel like the only reason they exist is to make sure you don’t forget about the person posting them. You can just feel how the tweet showed up on your feed the same way a middle-manager shows up to their dead end job. Actual substance is far and few between. The only reason I can tolerate the “following” tab is because I follow plenty of artists, which means once every 50 posts I get to see a nice drawing.
Perhaps the new answer is, “Well then, mute all the content creators and stop following the people who are constantly posting shit you don’t want to see. Just follow hella artists.” An incredible suggestion. Only problem is, I actually want to see discourse! I don’t want to reduce the entirety of the site to an art gallery (even though I might just have to). I like reading funny shit. I like reading interesting conversations that occur between people (even though this rarely ever happens anymore outside of users yelling at each other).
Perhaps the newer answer is, “Well then, for the love of god, close Twitter and just open Discord.” An amazing suggestion. But Discord is different. It serves a fundamentally distinct purpose. It’s like telling people back in 2010 to get off of Tumblr and onto a Skype group chat. That shit ain’t the same man.
Ok, maybe it’s a little bit similar… but you know what I mean.
So now what? Is there no other alternative? I’d genuinely rather visit 15 separate sites that host custom hand-crafted blogs, niche news, and thriving forums, than log on to Twitter one more time. And no. I’m not introducing Reddit into my site rotation. I was on there all of high school and college to know that it has its own host of unique fucked-up problems that I don’t want to deal with again now that I’m free.
Bluesky is a bit better, but it’s still the same shit. Instagram is hella ass. TikTok is Satan. Is Threads still a thing?
What happened to social media? Has the secret sauce gone missing, or has the sauce now been contaminated beyond repair due to corporate greed and the ongoing AI shitstorm? Is the heart still beating, or do we reside within a corpse?
In my opinion, social media was at its peak when it still resembled a person’s own website. Your customization options on Twitter boil down to your profile picture and banner. For some strange reason, every social media site thinks the banner is the baby and all the rest was the bathwater. I can't help but feel that the rest was just as important! Being able to change the wallpaper, add custom tabs, change fonts, organize posts, make your page look like absolute vomit…
Let’s just go back.
Make a website.
I’ll visit cuz I’m bored.
-Bipper