Meet “Marg”, Or Why I Quit Twitter After Over 12 Years
Bruce Springsteen, writing as serial killer Charlie Starkweather describing his crimes, says: “I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.” You could rightly argue that humans acting atrociously on social media is better than humans murdering other humans. But it strikes me as a true fact that social media has enabled a casual and base meanness from humans toward other humans, a rank defilement of kindness and a debasement of the body politic.
Leaving aside serial killers, if you have been on Twitter/X lately, you know the truth of that statement. An ordinary, everyday meanness, from the terminally online, and a hyper-partisan political environment that discourages debate and discussion, and rewards nastiness and rancour.
This is not a post only about Elon Musk: Jack Dorsey’s Twitter was plenty nasty, but the process has only accelerated. Under Dorsey, there were guardrails against perverse and violent content, and tacit limits on the sort of speech allowed on the platform, which at the time was beholden to its shareholders.
Now, as a private corporation in Musk’s hands, the platform has deteriorated so far I would say it’s in free fall. Cory Doctorow calls this process “enshittification”, and Twitter is indeed “enshittified”.
