Twitter Changed The World; Twitter Died

Mike Monteiro:

[…] I was in a cab headed to therapy, which meant I was in a mood and I absent-mindedly tweeted out “I’ve been shot!” then turned my phone off and went to talk to my therapist about becoming a well-adjusted human being.

When I turned my phone back on I had about 20 new messages. Texts, voicemails, and a bunch of tweet replies. Including my now-wife, wondering what hospital I was at. That’s the day I discovered what Twitter was for. It was for having fun. And telling jokes. (BTW, my wife still doesn’t think this was a good joke.) That’s when I was hooked.

It took me quite a while to get to Twitter and even though I was a bit more restrained in my jokes than Mike, I did have fun. A lot of it.

And at some point, and I don’t know exactly when or how or who — even scarier I don’t know if the people involved know when or how or who — Twitter made the decision to ride the hate wave. With their investors demanding growth, and their leadership blind to the bomb they were sitting on, Twitter decided that the audience Trump was bringing them was more important than upholding their core principles, their ethics, and their own terms of service.

And that, whenever that day might have been, is the day Twitter died.

Like Mike, I have been considering shutting down or just not using my account any more. I don’t like what Twitter has become. I don’t like myself on Twitter half the time. I do wish App.Net got a reboot today. That way, we could try to start fresh and fix the mistakes that were made. Soon, I will have less and less reason to engage on Twitter. Perhaps there’ll be an alternative around by then. Perhaps not…