a curated selection of thoughts collected within a 1 gb limit
it's the afternoon of april 14, 2022. tesla CEO and multi-billionaire elon musk is dead set on buying the twitter company for over $44 billion. his goal: privatize the company, make the algorithms open-source, and fight for freedom of speech online…whatever that means. people were shocked. what is he buying twitter for? what will he do? what does this mean for content moderation? that last one was one of the biggest takeaways. elon’s very infamous for his not-quite-progressive opinions online. you know, the average “i’m not right-wing i swear” kind of opinions. regardless of your what you think of him, people were skeptical. it even got to the point where users were considering leaving the site altogether if elon pulled through with the deal.
on april 26, while many were jumping ship to websites like tumblr, newgrounds, and whatever, i had a different vision of my own. consider the following: why work under another conglomerate’s website when you can have a website of your own? and that’s where stove.neocities.org introduced itself with this bombshell of a photo:
for the sake of posterity, the test page has been mostly unaffected except for the general CSS code. other than that, it's all the same wording and image formatting. i didn't even know how to resize photos without editing it myself on my crappy school chromebook. since then, i've written at least ten articles including this one here. it's hard to believe that i'm even writing this at all, let alone enjoying it. most of the time, i reserved this review style of writing for the school newsletter or something.
now, let’s go back to this twitter thing. october 27 rolls around and the deal has finally been made; elon is officially chief twit. so, what’s next for twitter? well, whatever it is, it’s certainly not looking great for the poor animal. that’s not to say that twitter has only gone downhill BECAUSE of elon. no, it’s been going downhill from the start. to be frank, it has improved. for instance, the tweet cap has been raised to 240 characters at a time. not to mention the topics feed is actually pretty useful unless it shows tweets from a topic you don’t even follow. but it has gotten worse otherwise. remember fleets? neither does twitter. remember when you can create moments on mobile? neither does twitter. remember NFT profile pictures? good, because twitter will make sure you remember. but this was all before the elon takeover. now? i’d argue that it’s actually gotten even worse. not only that, but it’s more gimmicky than ever. i'm probably not gonna get down to the specifics of why elon is so incompetent. i'm just here to laugh at the weird man doing weird things.
so, let's talk gimmicks, there’s been talks on developing a “twitter 2.0”, whatever that means. and that free speech thing? apparently one of the first people to be unsuspended was a convicted pedophile. great start. also, i believe the use of the N-word skyrocketed by 500%. can’t even make this up if i tried. all i can say is that as an american, freedom of expression will never guarantee freedom of consequences. if i tell my friend to shut up, he’s not getting off scot-free just because he’s technically allowed to be annoying. no sir, he’s annoying me and i want him to be quiet. plain and simple.
anyway, you know twitter blue, right? if you're a normal human being who doesn't know, twitter blue is essentially the premium version of twitter. if you paid $5 a month, you would get access to less ads, a better text reader (which shouldn't be locked behind a paywall but whatever), longer video posting, and an honest to god edit button. for the first time, you could actually edit your tweets! it's only for a limited time after you make a tweet, but you could edit tweets now! i'm probably missing something else, but that's the basic gist. "but what about verification?" i hear you not saying at all. look at all these important people taking on big positions. whether it be a government official or a content creator, that sweet sweet blue checkmark looks pretty important. hey, i make articles about cartoons that only i care about. where's MY blue button?
well, elon's got you covered. because for the low price of $20, you can have it all for yourself. of course, if you look at that lucrative offer for more than a second, you'll realize that a monthly fee of $20 for an emoji just isn't sustainable. even stephen king wasn't having it and he's already got a checkmark of his own. so elon sees this and then decides to lower the price to $8 a month. but it's not just a checkmark. for this price, you get access to half as many ads, a better text reader, longer video posting, and...wait, hold on.
yeah, this is where i sort of lose his train of logic on the checkmark thing. it only inflates the base price for those who already had twitter blue for all the cool stuff they had before. on top of that, the checkmark itself is phony! you go to someone's profile to click on their checkmark and it actually tells you whether or not they paid for it. well, there’s actually one more thing. anyone with a checkmark can automatically be seen at the top of a reply section. so let’s say you click on a tweet and you check the replies. if there’s a verified reply, they’d probably get first-class seats. this is meant to make the replies more “quality” if anything, but it feels very last-minute.
at least they’re honest. you ever notice how a lot of apps have those updates that usually say the exact same thing? you know, something like “we’ve been squashing bugs to improve your experience” or whatever. even if they had a complete overhaul of their UI, that’s what twitter would do. but in the wake of this twitter blue crap, they had an actual update log! we know what they’re changing now! it’s still crappy ass $8 twitter blue, but it’s something!
unsurprisingly, this has been largely abused by multiple parody accounts. some notable figures changed their names to, get this, elon musk. naturally, they all got suspended once elon realized that maybe this wasn't such a good idea. i believe somebody acted as the company valve and tweeted out how the checkmark thing only leads to fake news and misinformation. you might know that the real valve goes by @valvesoftware. but this fake valve, however, goes by @valvesotfware. they just swapped the T and F. it's as if i wrote it down. even daniel radcliffe at one point acted as weird al to promote the new movie, weird: the al yankovic story. great movie, but sadly, it wasn't great enough to spare mr. radcliffe from public execution. man, if only there was a way to keep people from taking the same username. no, you know what? i have a better idea: don't give everyone a blue tick.
in a post-fill werrell era of twitter, this whole "everyone is verified" mentality is ignorant in the most embarrassing ways imaginable. i thought the whole point of being verified was to make sure people can know who you are. in 2009, baseball manager tony la russa sued twitter because of a fake account in his name. that same year was when they introduced verification to distinguise notable personalities from fake parody accounts. that was the point of verification. i don't need to explain why this doesn't work if anyone can be verified. personally, i can't imagine what this will do for advertisers. that fake eli lilly tweet actually tanked their stocks. while it's pretty funny to see a company that sells expensive insulin lose money, it doesn't change the fact that this will kill any chance of advertisers coming back here. whatever they tried doing, it's flopping hard. that's probably why elon eventually stopped selling twitter blue altogether. it'll come back eventually, but not without some tweaks.
i think that's what intrigues me the most about this whole ordeal. it seems like elon wants to make twitter even better but doesn’t know how. remember when he fired thousands of employees? apparently, he’s already talking about hiring a new leader and trying to get back everyone he fired before. i think he even fired some people only because they were critical of him. it’s like he doesn’t know what he’s doing. he said something about removing some programs that he deems “unnecessary”. what he doesn’t realize is that one of the programs he removed was the one that operates two-factor authentication. that means for those accounts logging in with 2FA, they can’t get back in. so if you have 2FA and you’re logged in, don’t log out.
and the worst part about all of this is that my criticism does not matter if elon is not going to listen. seriously, he’s so annoying. he’s like an eight-year-old for all i care. and he’s got millions of fans that will take his word and run with it. and of course it’s crypto bros. it’s always them. although, there’s quite a few right-wingers and other types of annoying people on elon’s side. this was never about building a business or fighting for freedom of speech. this was about “owning the libs” and fighting off boogeymen. his followers don’t seem to care because all of this is catered to them. it’s gotten to the point where some people will go out of their way to make entire memes out of elon owning everybody ever. there’s something so parasocial about the whole thing. these people have spent so much time following around elon like a god and using twitter as the end-all be-all town square of the public. and...i just can't take it.
look, i like twitter. i don’t love it, but i like it. it’s a place where independent creators and journalists can spread themselves wide. i’ve gotten so much mileage from it. some of the funniest things i've ever seen come from there. i even post my own art on there like i would on other websites like instagram and such. but if i want to love it, it has to love me back. i'll continue to post on there what i've done creatively. i'll continue to catch up with friends on there if i can't find them anywhere else. i'll even post whatever's on my mind. but it's gotten increasingly more tiresome for me to scroll and scroll. sometimes the best thing to do is stop endlessly swiping for five minutes. i mean, i can’t guarantee that i’ll stop using it entirely. i’ll definitely try to ease my usage so it's not a burden. i can even moderate my timeline more strictly to get rid of all the crap. but i don’t think it’s worth letting this elon thing get to me. it could blow over and send him billions of dollars into debt for all i care.
initially, i started this website as a way to counteract elon's buyout, mostly as a joke. i didn't even have a clue about CSS back then. but i've actually contemplated with a website like this for longer than that because there's only so much you can say on twitter without looking weird. twitter is bite-sized and to the point. while that's a benefit for news journalism and art pieces, it's not as good when you're just talking. because you can talk for a long while and it would look pretty stupid. i suppose it's all about looks. you can't put in too many hashtags because it gets in the way. you look like a spammer. less than a year later, i've never felt more creatively fulfilled writing these articles. in a weird way, i'm thankful that elon musk bought twitter. because only a guy like him can make me realize just how much better i could be if i took a break every once in a while and spent my time somewhere else that's less grating. you know, like truth social!
yeah, you know truth social. that’s the social media app that donald trump desperately wanted to make a thing. christ, he’s got a website all to himself. if anything, he’s doing the same damn thing i’m doing. why would he go back to twitter when he's got his own app? sure its launch was completely disastrous. sure it only appeals to one niche and can’t turn a big enough profit to be sustainable. sure it took a while to get its own android app on google play. but my god, the bastard did it. i don’t even know why he’s running for president again. he’s already got it all on truth social.
i kid. no good platform is without a few holes drilled into its head. instagram also happens to be owned by a metaverse nutjob and tumblr still needs time to stitch things back together. but i find myself somewhat more fulfilled in those places in hindsight. instagram is nothing but content without any of the fluff so i can manage my feed slightly easier. it's not always so reliable, but it's a step. meanwhile, tumblr has labels you can set and it separates each feed so that i know what i'm looking for. and here? i'm free. i'm free to write these stupid things as i please and truly express just how meaningful art can be. although, i have to admit that i haven't really been doing that as much as i was before. so this will be the last big hitpiece for a good while. i can't guarantee that i'll do this forever. but at least i’m not running twitter.