Sir Elton John, write the Twitter edition of Candle in the Wind please

'Something went wrong. Try reloading,' yes Elon the damage to my brain is terminal but I will persevere unlike your website xxxx

Since Elon Musk took the reins of the microblogging site Twitter for $44 billion last October, its looming demise has quickened. Lay-offs and the blue tick system's rejigging have weakened user experience. On Saturday, it appeared broken, but confirmation from the big fella himself that it wasn’t faulty but rather actual limits have been brought in, a weird move for the platform as it's dwindling, but addicted core audience hangs on due to requiring constant content just shoved in their dopamine-deficient faces like a tsunami. Instead of a wave of tweets, they were greeted with ‘Twitter Rate Limit Exceeded’, meaning you could only see a certain number of tweets, until they were like, ‘enough now, go read a book you twat.’

Instead of a novel, I’m doing this and while I type the 1997 James Cameron blockbuster ‘Titanic’ is playing. I opted for this because it’s sad, would entertain me for hours, and I’ve seen it before. However, the rewatch impulse first hit when five incredibly rich people yeeted themselves into the sea to check out the wreckage of the 1912 disaster in what structurally appeared to be a Diet Coke can helmed by an Xbox controller. Their fatal submersible adventures sparked one of the wildest days seen on the flagging social media site, not seen since Trump got COVID-19, and some of it was discussions about how well it has aged as a film but mainly it was just insane debate. Some, in case you aren’t chronically online, were like, ‘Whoever is laughing about this is sick in the head.’ Others were like, ‘That is an irrelevant aspect of finding the prospect of billionaires hurling themselves fathoms below a silly prospect’.  Things can be funny and heartbreaking; the day that stops being true, the world will be unbearable. The point is that Twitter is dying, which is sad for me. Some other site will come along and take its place (if you have a BlueSky code you know what to do) but for now, the website fills my head with daily dots of distraction and, honestly, some of the most meaningful interactions of my day; whether that is pathetic is frankly not my business!  

Sometimes it’s like it’s destroying my brain, but with some curation, it can be a wonderful resource to stay engaged with the wider world, an important thing for my work and life. However, its most vital service is laughter, mainly about some of the dumbest things you’ve ever seen in your life, like Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani telling off an old socialist for being a lowly piano teacher instead of a left-wing broadcast news talking head, which is both pompous and hysterical. To sit here and explain some things that make me howl multiple times a day would be tedious. Twitter makes me giggle and despair. Often, there’s an odd feeling to reckon with, the reflex to share nonsense no one asked for on the internet, to post into the void. While perverse and gross, it's also so meaningful and mirrors a lot of other social interactions, whether real or fake. You don’t need to have ever met someone to have someone in real life to have an inside joke, and that is weirdly lovely to me. It’s also fun to keep in touch with people you know offline.

Deirdre Hill says the library is open and good for her; a read is a read!

Yes, my beloved Instagram interactions still exist, but it isn’t the same. The Meta-owned platform just isn’t as good at serving up a constant stream of bile. Instagram can also be a hellhole and needs fine editing to make it nice, but it does not provide the same service and brand of puerile insanity! 

This could be the chuntering of an addict, but really, what is the alternative? Until it is found, it must be maintained that posting is fun. On a slow work day, sometimes nothing beats getting swept in deranged smatterings of that day’s main character, an individual or a story. To witness the degradation of some of the most prestigious professions in real-time is beautiful. To have the reputations of industries like media, law, and politics annihilated just by having a smartphone is a wonder.  It’s a sick treat to watch;  hair-branded takes on the timeline by some of the so-called greatest minds of our era. Knowing their brains are just as smushed as mine is freeing, and long may that prosper, and that it won’t, is another of the many reasons why Mark Zuckerberg needs to beat Elon’s ass!