Just when I was feeling optimistic about the futures of me and mine, I read this. Well, I’ll always have bees, gardening, and the stock market to distract. My kids will have to make do with whatever scat is left in the broader social discourse.
Is Post a potential solution with their micro-payments platform? I would rather pay pennies to read something I genuinely want to read versus paying a monthly fee for something I might read once a month? In any case, Elmo will ultimately drive T(w)itter into the ground. I left it early 2023 and have zero desire to ever go back. It's the same reason I don't drink Drano for breakfast.
I sometimes wonder if someone like Google or Meta, even a startup with enough angel VC money, could run a kill shot on Twitter right about now by providing a media friendly alternative that keeps its audience grounded in reality and out of foreign influence. I have no idea what the business model would be, which is one reason that some outfit that’s already made on other social/online business might have to be the one to do it.
Hello, let me introduce myself: I am Luddite. I fell into the Anomalous Abyss of Curmudgeonly Luddites around the time when "Personal Computer" was replaced by "Personal Device" and I am proud of this. At least as proud as when I earned my Dolphins and. later, was successfully initiated as a Chief Petty Officer. Hear me growl.
I am not afraid of technology or change. I don't think that one who fears technology can exist aboard a submarine at any time, especially when the boat goes deep (!) or the OOD orders Angles & Dangles when you're manning the Fairwater Planes. (If you're in The Know, you'll understand those terms.)
Cutting to the chase, I don't have a smart phone. I don't trust a "device" acclaimed to be smarter than the human owner/operator.
I subscribe to no "app". I have enough subscriptions to pay each month in order to continue my cell phone "service" and my use of FiOS. My cell provider does not provide me texting "service". In my mythology, a phone is a phone, to be used when I want to be available - not while driving my manual, five-speed Tacoma.
I subscribe to Substack only because I subscribe to The Bulwark.
I have never cared anything about Twitter, and even less so now. I think of myself as something of a writer; I accept the fact that my opinions and writings are of little consequence to others.
Obviously, I am not a Very Important Person who must be constantly available to everyone at any time. (Oh, my growls were important to others - the ops and analysts in my watch section - but those days are past. Long past.)
I don't argue when you, JVL, about any of your points. I just suspect that there are (still) a few of us Curmudgeonly Luddites here and elsewhere who consciously eschew concern over how many "followers" anyone garners to their posts on social media or what An Idiot does to Twitter.
I don't have a job for which I need to or would benefit from using Twitter. Yes, I consider myself blessed.
Is it possible to be a professional journalist and NOT have a Twitter presence?
On a completely different tangent, Tiny URL still exists. Does Twitter handle redirection sites like it the same as it handles direct Substack links? Would using redirection sites only work for PC browsers, maybe phone browsers themselves, but not apps?
Anyone who wants to learn about the intersection of journalism, social media, and democracy should read Maria Ressa's book; How to Stand Up to a Dictator.
I don't remember right off the top of my head the title of the episode, but Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone" from the early 1960's had an episode that, in one 30-minute segment, perfectly illustrated this phenomenon and its destructive effect on society.
I am interested in the changing model for journalists. It appears that to be successful you have to be good at writing/reporting and marketing. I am a digital subscriber to the LA Times and it appears that they attempt to leverage columnists (they appear to have a fair number in all the different areas of the paper). They publicize them. Many haven their own newsletter/facebook or whatever. But I havent seen anything about how well this is working. I find on national stories the LA TImes does better than the NY TImes (of which I also have a digital subscription). I am sure it helps to have a billionaire owner but are they making money this way?
I closed down my Twitter account once the really smart people were being fired or jumped ship. I listened to Ben Wittes with Charlie last week re his Twitter nightmare backlash. I will move to Substack.
'I began to point to my features, my flaws. I asked her, “What would you do to me, if I were your patient?” I had many ideas. She gazed at me, and then noticed my ring. “Nothing,” she said. “You’re already married.” '
Distillation is the purest form of truth. That line says everything in four words. What a talented writer. Good pick, JVL.
Just when I was feeling optimistic about the futures of me and mine, I read this. Well, I’ll always have bees, gardening, and the stock market to distract. My kids will have to make do with whatever scat is left in the broader social discourse.
Is Post a potential solution with their micro-payments platform? I would rather pay pennies to read something I genuinely want to read versus paying a monthly fee for something I might read once a month? In any case, Elmo will ultimately drive T(w)itter into the ground. I left it early 2023 and have zero desire to ever go back. It's the same reason I don't drink Drano for breakfast.
I sometimes wonder if someone like Google or Meta, even a startup with enough angel VC money, could run a kill shot on Twitter right about now by providing a media friendly alternative that keeps its audience grounded in reality and out of foreign influence. I have no idea what the business model would be, which is one reason that some outfit that’s already made on other social/online business might have to be the one to do it.
I care as much about any given writer's number of Twitter followers as I do about the number of farts they pass.
Hello, let me introduce myself: I am Luddite. I fell into the Anomalous Abyss of Curmudgeonly Luddites around the time when "Personal Computer" was replaced by "Personal Device" and I am proud of this. At least as proud as when I earned my Dolphins and. later, was successfully initiated as a Chief Petty Officer. Hear me growl.
I am not afraid of technology or change. I don't think that one who fears technology can exist aboard a submarine at any time, especially when the boat goes deep (!) or the OOD orders Angles & Dangles when you're manning the Fairwater Planes. (If you're in The Know, you'll understand those terms.)
Cutting to the chase, I don't have a smart phone. I don't trust a "device" acclaimed to be smarter than the human owner/operator.
I subscribe to no "app". I have enough subscriptions to pay each month in order to continue my cell phone "service" and my use of FiOS. My cell provider does not provide me texting "service". In my mythology, a phone is a phone, to be used when I want to be available - not while driving my manual, five-speed Tacoma.
I subscribe to Substack only because I subscribe to The Bulwark.
I have never cared anything about Twitter, and even less so now. I think of myself as something of a writer; I accept the fact that my opinions and writings are of little consequence to others.
Obviously, I am not a Very Important Person who must be constantly available to everyone at any time. (Oh, my growls were important to others - the ops and analysts in my watch section - but those days are past. Long past.)
I don't argue when you, JVL, about any of your points. I just suspect that there are (still) a few of us Curmudgeonly Luddites here and elsewhere who consciously eschew concern over how many "followers" anyone garners to their posts on social media or what An Idiot does to Twitter.
Anyway, 'Nuff Said. Cheers!
very helpful in understanding the environment you, other writers, journalists, and opinion leaders are in
I don't have a job for which I need to or would benefit from using Twitter. Yes, I consider myself blessed.
Is it possible to be a professional journalist and NOT have a Twitter presence?
On a completely different tangent, Tiny URL still exists. Does Twitter handle redirection sites like it the same as it handles direct Substack links? Would using redirection sites only work for PC browsers, maybe phone browsers themselves, but not apps?
Anyone who wants to learn about the intersection of journalism, social media, and democracy should read Maria Ressa's book; How to Stand Up to a Dictator.
I don't remember right off the top of my head the title of the episode, but Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone" from the early 1960's had an episode that, in one 30-minute segment, perfectly illustrated this phenomenon and its destructive effect on society.
I am interested in the changing model for journalists. It appears that to be successful you have to be good at writing/reporting and marketing. I am a digital subscriber to the LA Times and it appears that they attempt to leverage columnists (they appear to have a fair number in all the different areas of the paper). They publicize them. Many haven their own newsletter/facebook or whatever. But I havent seen anything about how well this is working. I find on national stories the LA TImes does better than the NY TImes (of which I also have a digital subscription). I am sure it helps to have a billionaire owner but are they making money this way?
I dropped facebook before the 2016 election. Never looked back. No regrets.
I dropped twitter the day elon walked into twitter’s offices carrying a bathroom sink. Figured it was all going down the drain.
In my wildest thoughts I never would have imagined how much and how fast elon would degrade the company he paid so much to own.
Maybe he lost so much on the deal that now he simply wants to destroy it in the way thiel destroyed the Gawker.
They are deeply damaged men. This second gilded age is very unhealthy for all of us. The money hoarding must be stopped.
I closed down my Twitter account once the really smart people were being fired or jumped ship. I listened to Ben Wittes with Charlie last week re his Twitter nightmare backlash. I will move to Substack.
This is good. It made me subscribe.
'I began to point to my features, my flaws. I asked her, “What would you do to me, if I were your patient?” I had many ideas. She gazed at me, and then noticed my ring. “Nothing,” she said. “You’re already married.” '
Distillation is the purest form of truth. That line says everything in four words. What a talented writer. Good pick, JVL.
Thanks for the explainer, it’s nice to have all the points tied together.
I’m sorry: which of these is not like the other, “Maureen Dowd, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion.”