The Death of Twitter
It's easy to hate Elon Musk, but do you have the courage to hate the public?
If you value your time, then Twitter is dead. It’s no longer a site with edgy, funny, or interesting discourse. At the minimum, Twitter is a breaking news feed. At the most, it’s an observatory of the human zoo. It’s home to the most easily-triggered, bad faith, and histrionic creatures on the internet. To post your honest thoughts on Twitter is to cast pearls before swine.
But Twitter wasn’t always this embarrassing. It used to be a site where everyday people could mock celebrities, journalists, and politicians. The memes were hilarious. The ideas were cutting-edge. Today, Twitter is nothing like that. It’s decayed into a propaganda machine, a recycling plant, and a slop casino.
Twitter was a big part of my life for 6 years. I had a lot of fun there. To honor it, I will give Twitter’s demise a proper autopsy.
Jack Dorsey, Founder & CEO of Twitter
I created my account in 2020, during Twitter’s most censorious period. Soon after Trump branded COVID as The China Virus, the knives were out. If you were against lockdowns, wearing masks, or social distancing — your account could be suspended for no reason without recourse. The terms of service were arbitrary. If you didn’t post anything controversial, you could still get banned merely for following a controversial account. It was extremely frustrating.
The Twitter Files, an investigation into Twitter’s collusion with the Biden administration, revealed that Jack Dorsey isn’t particularly ideological — he’s just a coward. He lost control of the company he founded. Twitter was taken over by his most liberal employees.
In late 2021, Jack stepped down and promoted a man named Parag Agrawal to CEO. He isn’t worth mentioning.
Elon Musk, ‘Chief Twit’ of X
In October 2022, Elon Musk swooped in to save Twitter. He declared our constitutional right to free speech was at risk and bought the company for a whopping $44B.
Elon was initially hailed as a hero. Spirits were high. He walked into the Twitter headquarters holding a sink…so they could “let that sink in.”
Get it!?
Elon made some significant changes:
Reversed the Bluecheck policy. Only journalists, politicians, and celebrities could have the esteemed bluecheck. Now anyone can have it, as long as you verify your ID and pay for X Premium.
Reinstated banned accounts. Some of the most controversial right-wing figures, from Alex Jones, to Nick Fuentes, to Milo Yiannopoulos, and then-former President Donald Trump, were allowed to post again.
Rebranded Twitter to X.
Changed the business model to compensate posters for their viral posts.
Loosened the terms of service to let anyone say whatever they want, subject to the laws of the country they were posting from.
Given the other massive companies Elon runs, he slowly became less involved in running X. He hired Linda Yaccarino as CEO in 2023, who stepped down 2 years later. After she left, Elon passed the torch to someone else.
Nikita Bier, Head of Product at X
Nikita Bier was hired as Head of Product, but is functionally CEO. Nikita has a long career in creating viral dopamine loops.
Prior to joining X, Nikita started a company called tbh in 2017 — an app for high school students to vote on popularity contests. He sold it to Facebook for $30M. It was shut down 10 months later because nobody used it.
In 2022, Nikita started a company called Gas, which did the same thing as tbh, except users could pay to see who voted on each poll. Gas was eventually bought by Discord. It was also shut down in less than a year because nobody used it.
Since Elon hired Nikita — X has become significantly worse.
A brief preview of what you’ll see on the ‘For You’ page of X today.
Recycled ‘right wing aesthetic’ tweets from 2021.
Recycled viral tweets posted by people living in India or Nigeria.
Recycled gender discourse. Every 3 months there’s another debate over the attractiveness of dad bods, the ethics of age gap relationships, and dating app screenshots. No new points are made.
Black people asking each other questions, which often get over 20K likes. “Ya’ll ever wake up be like nah?”
Elon retweeting his army of fanboy accounts based in India with “💯” or “Yeah”
Political hysteria and conspiracy theories.
Elon hired Nikita to make X more of a viral dopamine loop than it already was. He’s doing his job well.
Pinpointing exactly what killed Twitter isn’t easy. There were a lot of changes and a massive influx of users from all over the world. I will go over a few factors that played a significant role.
Monetization
After Elon changed the business model, I was getting paid over $1,000 every month merely to post my thoughts. Six months later, I was demonetized with no reason given and no option to appeal. I was already posting for the love of the game for five years prior to my first payout, so I never expected to get paid. It was nice while it lasted.
But Elon isn’t just paying “pure posters” like myself. X is funding lives of luxury for people living in India and Nigeria who learned how to game the system by stealing viral tweets from Americans and posting cultural ragebait.
To address this problem, X revealed the country each account is posting from. Sadly, this wasn’t effective. Americans still get rage-baited by people in the third world every day. They don’t even bother to check.
Favoritism
Nikita is crafting the culture of X based around accounts he personally likes. He often sends huge payments to posters arbitrarily. For example, a slop account based in New Zealand posted a picture of Steve Job’s daughter that went mega-viral. The poster complained he wasn’t compensated enough, so Nikita sent him $10,000 USD. He will also send 5-figure payments to posters he likes then tell X he “wants to see more posts like this.” What he means by that is completely unclear. His preferences aren’t documented in X’s terms of service. Regardless, this incentivizes people to change what they post about, which greatly affects what people see in their For You tab.
Given Nikita’s taste, X has devolved into a hybrid of LinkedIn and a right wing version of Reddit. Nikita favors people who post with their real name and face. Given their jobs and reputations are at stake, they tend to be more “normie-friendly” than anonymous accounts who tend to be much edgier. As a result, anons are often shadowbanned. Even if they have large following and are verified with a bluecheck — their posts get little visibility. Their replies are often hidden and labeled as spam.
In addition, X has become just as censorious as Twitter was in 2020, especially for anonymous posters. Anons are getting suspended again with no reason given and no option to appeal. Given Elon’s fervent support of free speech, one might assume he would address this issue and correct it. But he hasn’t. In hindsight, I believe Elon only bought Twitter to prevent himself from getting banned.
Lastly, and most seriously — prominent anons have been doxxed without the doxxers facing any consequences. Despite this being against X’s terms of service, doxxers don’t get banned. Recently, a well-known account’s full name and address was featured at the top of X’s news tab. A few hours later, someone showed up at his house. Whether this carelessness is intentional, an oversight, or driven by AI — X is putting people’s lives at risk.
The message is loud and clear: anonymous posters are not welcome.
Democratization
If I had to boil down Twitter’s death to one cause, it wouldn’t blame any of the specific changes listed above. I blame the people. Since opening the floodgates of free speech, there’s now more people talking to each other than ever. This isn’t necessarily a good thing. I will list a few reasons why.
Intelligence
Globally, the average IQ is ~100. That means most people can handle day-to-day tasks — but abstract reasoning, pattern-recognition, and original thinking isn’t most people’s strong suit. The average person simply isn’t very bright.
Despite seeing the 300th debate over Leonardo DiCaprio’s taste in women, most people still give their two cents. If there’s a rumor about an account or celebrity, people will gossip about it on the timeline for days. If you put 🚨BREAKING: at the start of a post, millions of people will believe it as evidence of something that actually happened.
The algorithm gives the people what they want. If originality isn’t what they want, then the algorithm won’t give it to them. If someone posts a picture of a skinny girl with a caption saying “I like it when girls are a little chubby like this” (despite being the 1,000th person to make that joke) and it gets 5,000 likes — then the algorithm will push that post to the top of the feed. The system is working as designed.
Post-COVID Desperation
The decline of X mirrors an overall decline in the quality of people. Since COVID — cool, smart, and interesting people with unique perspectives have become harder to find. The average person is more isolated, less social, and less sexually active than ever. Most people simply don’t have a life outside of the internet. Given this physical isolation, status isn’t necessarily reached through in-person achievements anymore. Status can be earned just as easily on the internet.
On X, having a lot of followers often equals high status. You will become a regular on the ‘For You’ tab regardless of if you’re just a moronic slop account.
This person is merely recycling “green polo nationalism” posts from 5 years ago. But the influx of new users from the third world don’t know that. He earned himself 1M views and probably a handsome payout. It’s never been easier to become a big account on X.
Conspiracy Brain and The Right Wing Slopfest
Politics has become such a dominant force in America that it replaced culture. The quality of TV shows and movies have plummeted because the politics of the writers are woven into the plot and the actors they hire. Art has been replaced with propaganda. Politics is at the top of most people’s minds.
The rise of endless politics, combined with traitorous government policy and lack of transparency, has birthed what can best be called conspiracy brain. Candace Owens earned herself a massive audience by making every political issue about The Jews. Tucker Carlson often entices people with conspiracy brain by boiling down political issues to aliens and demons.
In addition, since Trump won the 2024 election — “posters are in control.” The Trump administration hired right wing posters from X to post propaganda for the Department of Homeland Security and The White House’s X accounts. This created an incentive to turn otherwise intelligent posters into Trump’s personal cheerleaders in hopes of getting hired, making healthy critiques of his policies close to impossible.
The online right went from edgy and intelligent dissidents to predictable propagandists and braindead conspiracy theorists. Your options are to be slavishly pro-Trump or hysterically anti-Trump. Blanket answers to complex questions are rewarded while clear and nuanced thinking is attacked.
Most people who have been posting on Twitter for years agree that it was significantly higher quality under Jack Dorsey. The harsh limitations on free speech forced people to be more creative in how they expressed themselves. As a result, people who posted there were more clever, more interesting, and most importantly — funnier.
I’m a free speech absolutist in an abstract sense. Bad ideas must be challenged. People in prominent positions who abuse their power must be be mocked. Good ideas by intelligent minds should earn their way to the top. But as we’ve seen — that simply isn’t how it works in practice.
True meritocracy can take place when intelligent people have the right to free speech. But we simply don’t have an intelligent population, and we probably never did. There’s a reason why governments hand out bread and circus treats to distract people from more serious issues that affect their every day lives. The Pentagon posting videos of blowing up boats instead of the FBI cracking down on violent crime, for example. The people gobble it up. The rabble are easily propagandized. The average person just can’t help themselves.
The algorithm is a mirror, and that mirror can teach us a lesson. The fall of Twitter proves the world isn’t supposed to be talking to each other. There should be very high standards for who can enter the town square.
Related Posts
"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
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.