There’s a tweet from former President Donald Trump that I often think of. It’s unintentionally hilarious and shows how the human experience works.
A dozen years ago, he posted this: “The Coca-Cola Company isn’t happy with me — okay, I’m still going to keep drinking that garbage.”
Say what you want about this guy, most likely that he’s a racist liar bent on subverting long-held democratic norms, but it’s a great tweet. This is perhaps the Gilded Billionaire’s most relatable moment. This sucks, and of course I’m going to keep doing it. Most of us feel this way every morning as we head to work.
Interestingly, President Trump’s tweet is pretty much how I feel about Elon Musk’s X (the website formerly known as Twitter). Yes, it’s terrible. It degraded in countless ways, actively encouraged the worst accounts, and lost many of its best users. But there’s really no replacement and I’ve been using it for too long to change it now.
Tweet may have been deleted
I previously wrote that the best alternative to Twitter is to log off. In this article, I argued that Twitter has become significantly less fun and difficult to use, and that knock-offs like Threads and Blue Sky don’t have the user base or familiarity to hit the same itch. I pointed it out. I support all of that. The best alternative to Elon Musk’s X is to log off, but I can’t do that.
Many people left X. Anecdotally, I’ve seen a lot of people quit, especially among those who don’t really need X. For example, all the contributors I followed closely, including screenwriter Brian Koppelman, songwriter Jason Isbell, and sitcom guru and baseball player Mike Schull from The Office, have all left. It’s gone. After an initial post-Mask surge, X lost daily active users and then stagnated over the summer, Mashable reports. Several studies show that Twitter usage has declined significantly since Musk took office. In short, people are abandoning X.
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But wait Leo from the Wolf of Wall Street meme, I’m not going to get scared and walk away. To be clear, this is not an endorsement of Musk or his platform. I understand all the reasons why X sucked. You can hardly scroll through without seeing crappy dropshipping ads, promotional posts from scammers, or tons of replies from verified bots. And Musk, well, he’s a right-wing shit poster who actively remakes X in his image. While he banishes people he doesn’t like, he reinstates far-right accounts banned for misinformation, abuse, or worse in the name of loving free speech.
You should stay away from X. It’s the right thing to do and a healthy choice. And from a purely practical point of view, this site is the worst so far. But let’s be honest here: I’m lazy and I love posting. Sure, TikTok is a fun and addictive platform, and Instagram…I’m sure it’s okay, but my formative social media years were centered around Twitter and text-based jokes. It’s not something I want to give up on. At least not yet.
X is the rotting corpse of a website I once loved, but at least its limbs and appendages are familiar. Muscle memory remains. I know exactly where the X app is on my phone’s home screen, I know exactly how to compose a tweet, and I write my own replies as if they were breathing, without thinking. You can jump to My follower list is as curated as my following, even if my engagement is non-existent because I don’t pay Elon my $8 monthly check. If it weren’t for the inertia of its previous existence, Twitter, X would be nothing more than Truth Social. However, inertia is a terrifying force.
I’ve been thinking about staying off Twitter for quite some time. Sorry, I mean X. However, one tweet prompted me to finally write this article. User @pankendev posted, “‘If you hate Elon so much, why are you still here?’ I was here first, so why should I leave? He’s the worst.” .
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And you know, they’re right in a way. Yes, masks suck, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use the decaying remains of Twitter to enjoy whatever I can. For example, the day Eric Adams, the unpopular mayor of New York, was indicted was very funny, especially as a New York City resident. You can’t miss it because a skinny billionaire decided to take down his favorite website. I also write about the internet at Mashable. That means you can’t completely walk away from X anyway. There’s no way you can actually quit cold turkey.
Tweet may have been deleted
Tweet may have been deleted
X is a sunken ship. But they just can’t find their way to the life raft. None of the X clones have come close to matching the old Twitter, so I’m left clinging to the wreckage left behind.
Elon Musk’s X sucks, but it’s still okay. I’m going to keep logging into that garbage. At least until you can log off completely.