I feel very strongly about calling Elon Musk's social media platform "X" because I want to remind people that Twitter is gone -- it's dead. And we know who killed it. We need to acknowledge the power that one edgelord billionaire has over our public sphere, and remind ourselves that we cannot reclaim that space. We can't make it "ours" again by calling it Twitter. I'd rather build up new spaces online than chase after the memory of one that is lost.
I like it here! I wish more people were here, and I wish it were just a little more secure in the long term, but it's been nice.
@annaleen I prefer Xitter for it perfectly tells, it is just a mocked facade of what it once was.
@annaleen
The "formerly known as" is such a journalistic copout.
Better would be "X, which displaced Twitter."
"formerly known as" makes it sound like a simple rebranding exercise, rather than a fundamental change in policy, audience, content, and purpose.
i understand the argument and i've heard the alternative argument to keep calling it twitter
my take is call it whatever you want, as long as it's mocking, because mockery and humor is a weapon
so yes, let's call it "X"
as in "who's that? oh that's my ex" 😁
@annaleen I prefer Xitter, to a) distinguish it from many other things called X, b) keep a reference to the platform it replaced, and c) indicate that it's an informational shitter.
And conversely, I refuse to acknowledge Facebook's rebrand to Meta. I will keep calling it Facebook to maintain connection to all the bad press it deservedly received in 2018-2021.
Still calling it twitter is to remind y'all that shitty wine in new bottles still tastes the same.
And as someone only on Mastodon, I've no desire to reclaim it.
You're overthinking it. It's just a shorthand way of saying, fuck you, Elon . . .
@annaleen even before Musk killed it, this was not a good place to be and I don't hold with people crying after something just good enough to bully and slap people with the help of masses following big accounts and their own definition of what's right. Sorry but stop. I lurked there till Elon announced to be interested, so I deleted my account and never looked back.
@annaleen I can understand the meaning of losing Twitter for many people, who made their living by connecting there.
However, Twitter was as public as X is today, meaning it wasn't. It never was yours nor "ours". If it was actually public, it could not have been sold to Musk in the first place. The means of its past owners just aligned more with yours, by incident.
@annaleen If billionaires are buying up social medias just to kill them good let them waste their money but they'll never silence everybody.
@annaleen It has never been a public space, unfortunately. People wanted to believe it was, and that worked mostly fine, until it didn't.
I like calling it Twitter because it bugs the hell out of him — not out of any nostalgia for the old Twitter.
Ignoring his X is like ignoring him which he hates more than anything.
@annaleen pretty much with you on this. I do separate it out depending on whether it's pre EM or post. If I'm referring to the past, it's often "Twitter-that-was" but anything now, it's X, rather because I feel its insulting to refer to the old version by the new name, and the new name is simply an insult now. (It's a lot longer to write this than think it...)
But firstly, I try not to refer to the new one at all, and the old one sparingly.
@annaleen Twitter became ultra woke and censorious, but X is moving in the direction of free speech.
@annaleen I understand what you are saying! Twitter is dead. The twitter we loved is gone, killed by Elon Musk for some reason which is not clear to me.
@annaleen Twitter was a cesspit from early on, and always a commercial space. X made it worse but it was always sh*te...
@annaleen You can have your nice feelings, but twitter was never yours. it was never public. take your nostalgia colored glasses off
@annaleen I feel very strongly about not calling Elon Musk's social media platform "X" because it reinforces the idea that cooperations can appropriate common terms as trade marks.
Continuing to call the platform Twitter is not to reclaim the space, but to reject Musk's ownership to the letter X.
@annaleen It’s a strong argument pro calling it by its new name. However, I bet it really annoys him when people don’t call it X -- and I really want to live in a world where we can annoy this manchild, no matter how little.
@annaleen I've wondered about the ubiquity of the "root" model in file systems, etc. And at least part of it is how it reinforces the social construction of property. I'm not sure how many people really get this, how much these systems are designed so that a few people, even one person, has the ultimate password and the last word, and can just outright destroy digital culture.
@annaleen I only refer to Twitter in the past tense. And I don't refer to X at all, because it is irrelevant.
@annaleen If you are still engaging with elon musk regardless of the current name of his madness please block me. OR admit you are still on twitter so I can block you. THanks.
@annaleen always makes think of Monty Python’s parrot sketch. Twitter is not pining for the fjords like a Norwegian Blue. Twitter is an X-parrot.
@annaleen Sorry but before Musk took over Twitter, it was already an ultracapitalist right-wing cesspool thriving on bullying minorities. Musk just took that to its extreme.