Twitter C/D

ok but clowning google plus was some of the best times ever had online

forget google plus, google wave baby

Were they the first to add "+" to their name? Everything is "+" now.

orkut was my shit bring back orkut

one of Linda Yaccarino’s big announcements for X while she’s in Vegas for CES is a video partnership with…Tulsi Gabbard pic.twitter.com/44VGaCkOtC

— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) January 9, 2024

I want Jaiku back. Combine it with app.net and you'll crush it

Welcome to The Family

As of last night, my phone wouldn't let me use Twitter anymore unless I updated the app (which would have turned it into X and probably done a bunch of nefarious shit to the phone)...so I deleted the app entirely. Still using Twitter on my laptop a little but have one foot out the door now for sure.

I'm still using the Twitter branded app on my android phone but realise it's probably on borrowed time.

I still have the Twitter app on an old ipad but search won't work on it.

i have the x app on my phone but i do not uses it, sometimes i go to twitter.com and search for boston celtics

what are those fellas up to

theyre doing great

bring back kinja

Does Larry Bird still play for them?

in spirit

Imagine being worth billions and choosing your time to...post online, like the rest of us

"Perspective

In business and in life, I have always believed that the best way to understand someone’s perspective is to reverse places with them. Pretend that you are sitting in their seat, and they are in yours.

The story I am about to tell begins on January 3rd, 2024"

How it started, how it's going pic.twitter.com/KziTOa9byi

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) January 8, 2024

lol if ackman actually loses axel fkn springer

He is writing LRB length essays on X, man has been so roasted.

it's not impossible that out of caitains-of-industry-style solidarity a publisher with the politics of springer (v bad) actually forces BI (which it owns) to retract the story or modify it in damaging ways, despite it being true, which would offset this extremely enjoyable and deserved roasting

is this the first large-scale main-character event* since elon's changes (which basically made him the permanent main character, which is after a while much less fun)?

*honest question, twitter has literally destroyed my memory

probably obvious but s/b captains

It's a 'recovery' for twitter of sorts. Israel/Palestine has shown that you can still get quite a lot of news/analysis out of it (and you get to face some very dark stuff too but it's all aggregated in a way that was questioned whether you could get it again from a main event), and then it spits out its first main character for a while.

“main character “ to who, tho? i don’t know who Ackman is or what he’s upset about, and i don’t care. if he’s a billionaire, then he deserves the guillotine— that’s about all i know or think of it.

it isn’t in the news— no coverage that i can see on WaPo, the Times, Politico, etc.

i agree with xyzzz that twix has been fine for getting out info during the genocide, but honestly, this site isn’t as important as it once was, and that’s a good thing.

main-character-syndrome has always been a purely in-twitter phenom: with the caveat abt my memory still in place (and noting the musk special case) i'm not sure that any of them previously (and significantly) broke containment into the "grown-up" papers

it’s sort of like being a “main character “ in a really awful novel that hardly anyone reads then, i get it

i thought you approved of things that hardly anyone reads! (don't worry i'm teasing)

i set out my evolving arguments abt twitter -- including a clearer definition of "main character syndrome" -- here and here:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2022/november/goblins-r-us
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2023/november/twitter-dispersed

(apologies as always for spam but i definitely said it better than i will here, today)

"i don’t know who Ackman is or what he’s upset about, and i don’t care. if he’s a billionaire, then he deserves the guillotine— that’s about all i know or think of it."

Absolutely had no knowledge of him whatsoever but what twitter has been good for is as an insight into the mindset of the people who run things, their contempt for us, but also -- in main character mode -- how flakey and easily disposable they could be were the tide to turn. It could be a billionaire like Ackman, it could be someone from the professional classes like an academic or lawyer, or a politician (but we knew what contempt pols had for ppl, by and large)

xp

it's a very temporary and (materially speaking) misleading levelling, but (elon's confused, inpet and malfunctioning tweaks nothing withstanding) it really is a leveling: everyone reduced to an avatar, a screen name and 280* words

*obviously stripping this limit out has been one of his stupid tweaks, but to use table's adaptable formula, "hardly anyone" ever clicks on "show more" for the next 4720 words, and many treat it as a bagde of shame and humiliation (do the fkn intellectual work and unleash an old-school thread 🧵) (BUCKLE UP!)

of course ppl can and do game the numbers in all kinds of ways -- this is how politics mutates to adapt to the situation at hand -- so yr always peering to interpret a by-design chaotic and in-conclusion disgusting and exhausting scrim of information (good and bad) fused with opinion (also good and bad)

i only read the first lrb piece (at least so far) but my reaction was much the same as the lone comment there-- the phrase which leapt out to me dealt with "usefulness to journalists" or some such. and well, is the (dis)organizational structure now at xitter, which has distinctly moved into the promotion of fash shit-- are journalists so smart that, with their superior knowledge, it is worth enabling the other effects shitter is _actively_ seeking to achieve? which effects are racist pro-oligarchy right wing tech clown horseshit?

or is the fact that important pro-left, or marginalized groups, use remnant tidal-pools of communication within xwitter (i presume until they can be snuffed out, though maybe i'm wrong) worth it to everyone?

i guess pre-lon xitter was grate, tho not really to me i am neither that clever nor amuse-able, but uh, i hope y'all find a substitute.

it isn’t in the news— no coverage that i can see on WaPo, the Times, Politico, etc.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/05/us/plagiarism-bill-ackman-neri-oxman-claudine-gay-harvard.html

Not sure if Bean Dad got much coverage in Politico

It is in the news though idk if the Ackman angle would've been picked up as much if he wasn't having a meltdown on twitter.

mit media lab is a scam institution, thread re oxman wife of ackman, btw lol oxman and ackman

I didn't use any special plagiarism software, and I wasn't even particularly looking for it, I was just putzing around. But sometimes the writing style would abruptly would take a 90 degree turn, so I'd google and find the original source immediately. Twice in five minutes.

— Deeply Credentialed Yuga (@MelancholyYuga) January 11, 2024

The real issue, which is harder to appreciate let alone concisely relate without a technical background, is that there appears to be no original technical content.

— Deeply Credentialed Yuga (@MelancholyYuga) January 11, 2024

btw lol oxman and ackman

I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with a reasonably funny Cathy comic strip reference wrt "Ackman", but so far have failed. But I can't help but think of her every time I encounter his surname.

ack, man

yeah i mean to be fair, nothing in that thread it out of the norms of what is produced by the media lab. it's all garbage.

Deeply Credentialed Sokal @MelancholySokal

I've been assuming someone will say "I don't know who he is but sounds like he's huge" but in a funnier way

Sorry to this Ackman

Weird flex, bro

i thought you approved of things that hardly anyone reads! (don't worry i'm teasing)

Resistance Twitter is still rockin

i know this isn’t meant to be funny but I’m crying pic.twitter.com/cosskP1Kwf

— oatmeal influencer (@acechhh) January 12, 2024

wont someone think of the lanes

felt a huge happy surge of near-parental pride when elon described gawker as “evil to the core”

(i know only a few gawker-folk actually learnt their battle techniques at ilx but i like to think it was an important few: when musk finally goes down i want him to be mumbling "all noise dude summertime fun board and pickle bar", like instead of rosebud)

I hadn't seen that, it's glorious

bad to the bone

the fruits of a poisoned pickle bar