Remembering when Twitter, now known as X, was a cool place to be

It's lost its way, from the personal to the professional level.

Elon Musk didn’t ruin Twitter, or bland X as they refer to it these days; he merely kicked it down the hill and into the river. It used to be so cool, energizing due to the news cycle, and an all-around rewarding place to be. You could be exchanging tweets with a movie star, posting about your baseball team, and checking everyone’s pictures and videos out in a span of five minutes.

When I think back on what made Twitter so great, it’s the bored-sounding yet true connective tissue of the network. The ability to converse with movie fans from all over the world, catch onto a vibrant thread about a timely topic with at least 15 people, and discover so many souls that plain old geography prevented from happening. It’s like a private jet for your opinion. Good times.

Now, it’s an endless pit of hate. An all purpose negativity train with ads galore and thread interventions (they mix in people you do and DON’T follow so a lot is missed). Musk bought the place, fired everyone, and then hurried to hire some of his tech folks back when he realized how fucked he was. There’s nothing unique about it, except for the wacky feed updates and tons of shit that you didn’t sign up to see.

Even worse, it lessened the verified badge ideal. Earning one wasn’t easy before Musk started selling them, requiring you to pour your worth into a sign-up page and wait. The second try got me a nice-looking badge to sit atop my avatar. Yeah, there’s a pompous asshat corner of the label, but it was my closest destination next to the old school newspaper with a small square author image. It’s as simple as that: being verified was cool.

Once a price tag was placed on it, giving ANYONE the chance to get one after handing over a few shekels a month lessened the whole prestige of being selected to receive one. It was like the jury was exchanged for a bank of transactions. “Keep your badge, give me five bucks.” I’d rather pay Apple TV+ a streaming fee so I can watch Cherry again. There are better ways to spend money than to pay Musk to be verified on X, unless it fuels your job.

If you can make money that way off Musky pants, then by all means do it! Outside of that, posting is all I will do. Half the time, I feel like just deleting my account all together. What worth is it providing outside of the occasional Cards tweet exploding due to pure fan craziness? Little unless vanity could be procured from a well thought-out 280 character anger poem.

But then I remember that The Rock, Ryan Reynolds, Tom Cruise, and a few other stars follow me. When I FINALLY watch Fresh Kills, the lovely Jennifer Esposito’s directorial debut, she will respond to the review. That’s the little flavor that keeps pulling me back right when I think it’s time to eject… that damn connectivity.

I just wish it was like the old days, when politics didn’t enter every other discussion, opinions weren’t dumped on frequently, and the whole operation was more vivid and a lot cleaner. Most days, going on X pisses me off. Due to the craving of attention, I go back looking for more connection.

Musk didn’t create this. He just enabled it. Twitter isn’t dead, but it’s getting there.