"Globally, the average IQ is ~100." It's worse than that. The fixed average 100 number was made for Europeans (I think in England, if I'm not mistaken). The real global average, with all the third world included, has to be much, much lower than 100.
Funny how so many of us were redpilled on the average person being stupid, and came to Twitter, when we saw how easily people are given to hysterical fads like Covid and BLM, and then the sphere became so successful that it attracted those same sorts of stupidly average people who brought their hysterics with them, but only with "right wing" tints now.
I lived through the censor-everything era of Twitter from 2017 to 2024. Leftists used Twitter as a totalitarian echo-chamber, and anyone who looks back on that era fondly is inherently untrustworthy. I'd rather take what we have now over what we had then.
I'm not going to pretend the last 10 years of thought control didn't happen, and that it wasn't executed through artificial thought-police on the most populated websites.
I had no idea about what Nikita used to create in the dopamine loop/content arena; this makes so much sense now on what has happened.
Also, I had initially thought you jumped ship too early from X but the decline hit fast; then I too got banned for no reason and no chance to appeal. Not sure where it’s headed now, and the only way I can follow interesting posters is bouncing back and forth between Substack and a shortlist on X.
You might actually find this article interesting. The decay is happening in a form very similar to an ecology. I published an article on the topic a few months ago.
The slop was pretty bad for a while but has gotten better. That being said, Instagram has completely gotten blown to hell. Any random post that has nothing to do with any kind of politics gets comment spammed with that annoying "NOW THATS WHAT I CALL A DISTRACTION FROM THE EPSTEIN FILES" gif, or Israel/Palestine stuff, again on posts that have nothing to do with any kind of politics. Instagram used to be for the social elites and now it's just normie slop, third world comment spam, or Tiktok style reels.
It's interesting, I published an article yesterday on a similar note, largely about the decline of the online RW on Twitter and how I feel we'll need to change to evolve from it. The site just isn't fun anymore.
I think the tortured genius who tweeted “Fuck yeah bro, For You page. Huge boobs, naked asshole, Chinese nigga car accidents flying through the windshield, penis sex, Ukraine nigga legs blown off, it's For You dawg it's lit” would agree with you, great takes
Great observations about the effects of Nikita’s stewardship and the strange incentives of such an app.
I think Yarvin was right when he observed that flattening the blue check aristocracy was a mistake and that the app should strive to let other aristocracies grow and compete.
Ultimately it would be nice if such an app had virtuous aims for its users, a place, and boundaries, for all different types. But X is a reflection of the flattening, boundary dissolving tendency of the Western world. We don’t have a cafe society with Baudelaire and Balzac. We have attention monetizing app with Clavicular and Howling Mutant.
Maybe Substack can learn some lessons here. But I suspect that they will be subject to the same market and attention app forces.
Everyone having access to a blue checkmark with a phone number and credit card is an obvious "profit win", however it is nonsensical in terms of design. In effect it devalued the notion of a quality account, and many actual quality accounts got lost in the sea of blue checkmark accounts. Oftentimes, the non verified accounts are now superior in writing!
Doesn’t help that the algo on there ghettoizes everyone eventually. It’s all agitprop, ai slop, conspiracy nonsense and rage bait for clicks. Everyone I like is on here now anyway. Good riddance and may the company die sooner than later.
I agree, hysteria-slop is going to remain front and center on twitter. Though I think a lot of people are starting to get bored with it. One simple change (region-locking twitter by default) could fix a lot.
These days a nuanced post on X gets torn apart by people who only parse it for basic tribal adherence. Few respond specifically to the point, instead repeating their own shibboleth that they think comes next.
I suspect this unconsciously dumbs down even intelligent posters, who like Pavlov's dogs learn what gets engagement and what gets misunderstood. This compounds the enstupidification beyond normie and Third World participation.
I was pretty much addicted to Twitter and had to use an app and other systems to restrict my time on it. Now I reluctantly log on once a week or so to post a link to a new article, and even that no longer seems worth the effort.
I had a Twitter account for a long time, but got hooked around 2021. My was much more normie right wing back then + tech news related to AI, Robotics and such, I remember following you back then too plus derek guy and LindyMan.
When Elon Musk bought twitter I knew it would go bad because nothing that man has touched that is not a factory has turned well, as well as his long history of not delivering on what he says and 6 months later most of my recommendation stopped coming from interesting and tech stuff to basically tits, all the time, crypto stuff and RW based slop.
It was honestly the extreme sexualization that pushed me away for good, I could tolerate the retarded slop or crypto stuff but no matter how much you clicked to not recommend women, a flood of OF girls would still keep appearing pushing any value I got from the platform towards 0. Nowadays I substituted that mostly with much higher quality Substack curation, a series of RSS feeds and Hacker News.
The worst thing about Nikita Bier's pro-slop algo is how it removed any sense of community the site once had. Even as a small account (< 500 followers) I felt like I was a part of the discussion because mutuals would like/reply to my tweets all the time. My timeline was full of tweets with under 10 likes from niche accounts - it genuinely felt like a third space full of weird nerds who were into similar stuff as me. I made so many IRL friends through it.
Now it feels more like an Instagram feed - any Tweet that shows up on my TL is from a big account and already has 1k+ likes. Small accounts are effectively shadowbanned. I know so many folks who I thought had stopped posting, only to find that they still were, their tweets just weren't reaching me now, replaced by the same recycled slop you talked about. It's still a good place for news and the occasional discourse but so much of the magic that made it special is gone. Truly tragic.
This was really interesting. Twitter is not for me personally and I always manage my client’s expectations about what growth looks like on Twitter.
I was just talking with some friends today about how every time I open Twitter all I seem to see rage bait videos about immigrants in Europe, high schoolers, getting in fights, and the decline in fertility in the United States.
I am far from being someone who is concerned about being politically correct or edgy, opinions, or whatever. But posting slop isn’t edgy.
"Globally, the average IQ is ~100." It's worse than that. The fixed average 100 number was made for Europeans (I think in England, if I'm not mistaken). The real global average, with all the third world included, has to be much, much lower than 100.
Funny how so many of us were redpilled on the average person being stupid, and came to Twitter, when we saw how easily people are given to hysterical fads like Covid and BLM, and then the sphere became so successful that it attracted those same sorts of stupidly average people who brought their hysterics with them, but only with "right wing" tints now.
RIP Twitter
It's not much lower because there are many Chinese people, so it's ~90
I lived through the censor-everything era of Twitter from 2017 to 2024. Leftists used Twitter as a totalitarian echo-chamber, and anyone who looks back on that era fondly is inherently untrustworthy. I'd rather take what we have now over what we had then.
I'm not going to pretend the last 10 years of thought control didn't happen, and that it wasn't executed through artificial thought-police on the most populated websites.
I had no idea about what Nikita used to create in the dopamine loop/content arena; this makes so much sense now on what has happened.
Also, I had initially thought you jumped ship too early from X but the decline hit fast; then I too got banned for no reason and no chance to appeal. Not sure where it’s headed now, and the only way I can follow interesting posters is bouncing back and forth between Substack and a shortlist on X.
You might actually find this article interesting. The decay is happening in a form very similar to an ecology. I published an article on the topic a few months ago.
https://alwaysthehorizon.substack.com/p/artificial-predation-social-media?r=43z8s4
Thanks dude I’ll definitely check it out
Thanks!
The slop was pretty bad for a while but has gotten better. That being said, Instagram has completely gotten blown to hell. Any random post that has nothing to do with any kind of politics gets comment spammed with that annoying "NOW THATS WHAT I CALL A DISTRACTION FROM THE EPSTEIN FILES" gif, or Israel/Palestine stuff, again on posts that have nothing to do with any kind of politics. Instagram used to be for the social elites and now it's just normie slop, third world comment spam, or Tiktok style reels.
It's interesting, I published an article yesterday on a similar note, largely about the decline of the online RW on Twitter and how I feel we'll need to change to evolve from it. The site just isn't fun anymore.
Also published today, https://thedirtyblondediaries.substack.com/p/the-x-exodus-and-substacks-trail @dirtyblondemantis; I had an IRL conversation with a very big poster this week, and despite his success there moving narratives, he agrees, it's not fun anymore.
Many accounts have become the machine itself. It's sad to see. It's a loss of humanity when someone posts the same slop daily.
I think the tortured genius who tweeted “Fuck yeah bro, For You page. Huge boobs, naked asshole, Chinese nigga car accidents flying through the windshield, penis sex, Ukraine nigga legs blown off, it's For You dawg it's lit” would agree with you, great takes
Great observations about the effects of Nikita’s stewardship and the strange incentives of such an app.
I think Yarvin was right when he observed that flattening the blue check aristocracy was a mistake and that the app should strive to let other aristocracies grow and compete.
Ultimately it would be nice if such an app had virtuous aims for its users, a place, and boundaries, for all different types. But X is a reflection of the flattening, boundary dissolving tendency of the Western world. We don’t have a cafe society with Baudelaire and Balzac. We have attention monetizing app with Clavicular and Howling Mutant.
Maybe Substack can learn some lessons here. But I suspect that they will be subject to the same market and attention app forces.
Everyone having access to a blue checkmark with a phone number and credit card is an obvious "profit win", however it is nonsensical in terms of design. In effect it devalued the notion of a quality account, and many actual quality accounts got lost in the sea of blue checkmark accounts. Oftentimes, the non verified accounts are now superior in writing!
Doesn’t help that the algo on there ghettoizes everyone eventually. It’s all agitprop, ai slop, conspiracy nonsense and rage bait for clicks. Everyone I like is on here now anyway. Good riddance and may the company die sooner than later.
I’d been meaning to write something on this myself for a little while. But you saved me the time.
I’m glad I walked away last year.
It dawned on me so clearly after Irina was stabbed.
A week later Charlie got shot, and a week later there was a new ‘current thing’ & what happened literally the day before was forgotten.
I realised that the pace of hysteria and slop was not going to slow down.
When everything matters, nothing matters.
Like any form of public square, when it’s open to everyone, it just becomes a mirror or average of everyone in there.
Since there’s so many more of them, twitter is basically just Indians and bots at this stage.
So fuck that. No longer any reason to hang around any longer
Anyway.
Thankyou for writing this. As always. On point
Forgot to say also..
Being on twitter right now reminds me of seeing braindead boomers watching TV when I was a kid
Same energy
I agree, hysteria-slop is going to remain front and center on twitter. Though I think a lot of people are starting to get bored with it. One simple change (region-locking twitter by default) could fix a lot.
These days a nuanced post on X gets torn apart by people who only parse it for basic tribal adherence. Few respond specifically to the point, instead repeating their own shibboleth that they think comes next.
I suspect this unconsciously dumbs down even intelligent posters, who like Pavlov's dogs learn what gets engagement and what gets misunderstood. This compounds the enstupidification beyond normie and Third World participation.
I was pretty much addicted to Twitter and had to use an app and other systems to restrict my time on it. Now I reluctantly log on once a week or so to post a link to a new article, and even that no longer seems worth the effort.
I had a Twitter account for a long time, but got hooked around 2021. My was much more normie right wing back then + tech news related to AI, Robotics and such, I remember following you back then too plus derek guy and LindyMan.
When Elon Musk bought twitter I knew it would go bad because nothing that man has touched that is not a factory has turned well, as well as his long history of not delivering on what he says and 6 months later most of my recommendation stopped coming from interesting and tech stuff to basically tits, all the time, crypto stuff and RW based slop.
It was honestly the extreme sexualization that pushed me away for good, I could tolerate the retarded slop or crypto stuff but no matter how much you clicked to not recommend women, a flood of OF girls would still keep appearing pushing any value I got from the platform towards 0. Nowadays I substituted that mostly with much higher quality Substack curation, a series of RSS feeds and Hacker News.
Good piece.
THIS article is precisely what should be posted on X.
I miss you so much on there but, very grateful I’m able to sub to your substack, Med. 🙏💕
“Ya’ll ever wake up be like nah?”
The worst thing about Nikita Bier's pro-slop algo is how it removed any sense of community the site once had. Even as a small account (< 500 followers) I felt like I was a part of the discussion because mutuals would like/reply to my tweets all the time. My timeline was full of tweets with under 10 likes from niche accounts - it genuinely felt like a third space full of weird nerds who were into similar stuff as me. I made so many IRL friends through it.
Now it feels more like an Instagram feed - any Tweet that shows up on my TL is from a big account and already has 1k+ likes. Small accounts are effectively shadowbanned. I know so many folks who I thought had stopped posting, only to find that they still were, their tweets just weren't reaching me now, replaced by the same recycled slop you talked about. It's still a good place for news and the occasional discourse but so much of the magic that made it special is gone. Truly tragic.
This was really interesting. Twitter is not for me personally and I always manage my client’s expectations about what growth looks like on Twitter.
I was just talking with some friends today about how every time I open Twitter all I seem to see rage bait videos about immigrants in Europe, high schoolers, getting in fights, and the decline in fertility in the United States.
I am far from being someone who is concerned about being politically correct or edgy, opinions, or whatever. But posting slop isn’t edgy.
2015-22 truly was the golden age for Twitter, the community vibe that used to be there back in the day no longer exists
Dead Internet theory is becoming more and more true by the day. The real world is the new social media