Twitterpocalypse Now: Beings of Earth

Welcome to the latest installment of Twitterpolcalypse Now, an ongoing conversation where Nick Hanover and Kim O’Connor theorize the impending collapse of America’s least favorite website. For the archival records of the slow and steady decline of our biological neural nets, you can read Part 1 at Loser City, Part 2 here, and Part 3 at Loser City. 

Kim: Nick, we seem to have entered a new stage of the Twitterpocalypse, and we’re here today to try to make sense of it. It feels like there’s a way in which it was always coming to this: the day that Kanye West hailed Hitler on a livestream with Alex Jones and got suspended by Elon for tweeting a swastika [or posting that Ghislaine Maxwell pic?]. There’s the inevitability of it all, where Ye himself has become the zeitgeist incarnate. Bigotry, nationalism, gross spectacle, conspiracy theories, celebrity dysfunction—basically every bad vibe we’ve endured as a culture over the last decade has accumulated in this man, and now he’s spewing it back onto us.

But at the same time, there’s a way in which this all feels disorienting. It’s in the same vein of how I felt when Trump won the election, that dialectic of “I can’t believe this fucking guy is the president” and “of course he was always going to be president.” Even though I understand and agree with the popular notion that Kanye’s been spouting extremist views for years, it felt like today was the point at which he finally became his own inverse. I’m old enough to remember when Kanye told the world that George Bush doesn’t care about Black people, which I saw live and may have been the single most shocking thing that I’ve ever seen happen on TV, including 9/11. So these two pop culture spectacles are very weird bookends on the last 17 years of American history. 

Kanye’s antisemitism is vile and dangerous, and he’s obviously responsible for it, but I think the consensus that we should draw a hard line between his ideology and what appear to be catastrophic mental health problems is wrong. It’s maybe more useful to think of him as a walking Pepe meme: a really ugly, empty vessel that has been appropriated by people with ill intent. 

As usual with the Twitterpocalypse, none of this has any meaning, yet all of it is meaningful. There’s a fundamental incoherence that makes talking about it difficult, but I want to ask you about how you see the broad political implications of what’s been going on. Lately I’ve been around relatives who watch MSNBC and the sentiment in the mainstream seems to be that we’ve reached a point where Trump’s actions have finally caught up with him and that his dinner with Kanye and Nick Fuentes was a “political nightmare.” I…do not agree, nor do I agree that he’s being used by the far right as a ploy to make their key players seem more moderate by comparison. But I’m very interested to know how you’re reading the mood and the meaning of this particular moment in time. What do you see?  

Nick Hanover: As weird as this might sound I think Kanye has once again forced a do or die conversation in national politics, albeit in the polar opposite way he did with the Bush moment you mentioned. I don’t think either of us want to get into a discussion about his mental state at all other than to say whatever he is experiencing right now has amplified his historic lack of a filter and that the GOP players who clearly sought to exploit that are realizing too late that they couldn’t control him and he made explicit what they probably intended to just be (louder than usual) dogwhistling. I agree with you that the GOP did not intend for this to be a situation that made them look more moderate, I firmly believe they wanted Kanye to be aggressive and controversial they just didn’t expect him to go full “Hitler is cool, actually” and now it’s causing a lot of groups that are anywhere left of alt-right to not only unify behind shutting down Kanye but also finally recognizing that maybe Twitter does need some kind of governing body.

Right as we began this conversation today, President Biden himself used the platform of Twitter to unequivocally call out everyone who shares Kanye’s Holocaust denying beliefs, and he also seemed to suggest he felt that the platforms that enabled this misinformation were a major problem that may require government intervention. I could be reading too much into Biden’s statement, only time will tell, but even if the government does not step in directly with Twitter, Biden sent a very clear message that he and the party he leads consider the ongoing rise in antisemitism to be a major concern. More cynically, I can’t help but feel that Biden and his team are probably relieved that Kanye and Musk would fuck up so badly right now as the Democrats are facing blowback to their response to the railroad workers’ demands for better treatment.

One of the biggest obstacles for the progressive movement in America has always been the unwillingness of most people to “take a side” or involve themselves in conflict. You see this throughout our history, whether it’s WW2 or the Civil Rights Movement; we just generally avoid getting involved until the situation is either right on our front steps or too disturbing to look away from any longer. And I think in his typical chaotic way, Kanye just forced a lot of Americans to acknowledge that Nazis are definitely back, they are definitely not kidding and they really do believe Hitler had the right idea. And worse than that, the world’s richest man is directly aiding these Nazis and wants Twitter to be their greatest propaganda weapon. 

You said you don’t feel that Trump’s actions have caught up with him, so my question back to you is do you mean that in the sense of within the GOP or the culture at large? Do you think this situation with Kanye going full Hitler is going to help or hurt Trump in the long run?

Kim: It’s too early to tell. My own sense of things is that Trump is currently in a better spot than most people seem to think he’s in. He has in some ways reset the outsider/underdog status that served him so well in 2016. Historically, people have underestimated Trump and especially underestimated the degree to which his most racist and horrifying actions and words stir up his rabid base. Key Republicans are obviously starting to distance themselves, and DeSantis has emerged as a plausible rival. But does DeSantis have dragon energy? No. No, I don’t think he does. That is supposedly his advantage! But I’m not so sure. 

Outrage remains a very powerful political currency and it doesn’t always unfold in straightforward and predictable ways. So we have this situation where Trump and Twitter and Kanye are on the national news every night. We’re hearing “condemnation from all sides.” But is what we’re seeing the American public finally rejecting fascism once and for all? Or the launch of the most unhinged presidential campaign of our lifetimes? What have Republicans even got without the sheer force of Trump’s terrible personality? Deeply unpopular ideas and beliefs?? 

So I don’t know, we’re obviously a long way out, but I think Trump’s still in play. At the end of the day, if Republicans feel that he’s their path to power, they will line up behind him like they always have. If their path to power is some guy who’s not Trump, they’ll do that, too—but that seems harder. 

Going back to your point about progressive Americans being conflict averse, the obvious corollary is that regressive Americans are not. As we watch what’s happening with hate speech on Twitter, my question is how much more purchase are these people going to find now that the subtext has been made text?

Nick: Literally right after you responded, Trump announced that he was using Elon Musk and Matt Taibbi’s questionable “Twitter Files” stunt as yet another pretext for demanding a 2020 recount/redo. It doesn’t seem to matter to a not-inconsiderable portion of the American population that the “Twitter Files” unveiled nothing that would be considered election fraud, nor does it seem to matter that everything Taibbi “revealed” happened before Biden was president not during his presidency, these people are running with it as reason enough to go to war. 

I’m sure you are just as tired of bringing everything back to Hitler as I am but it’s hard not to feel like history is repeating here and we’re heading towards a similar situation as the decline of Hindenburg after his final re-election that paved the way for Hitler to seize control. Over and over and over again the Democrat leadership has been generally unwilling to take this nu-fascist party seriously but they have specifically failed at fighting back against Trump’s continued distortion of reality. Even the way Biden condemned the rising antisemitism shows this– rather than directly name Musk or Kanye or even Trump as fueling this hate movement, he vaguely stated what the facts are and even more vaguely suggested someone should probably do something about it. As great as it is to see him condemn antisemitic rhetoric and identify it as a major problem, this response is still the definition of too little too late and I truly believe we’re heading towards a new version of the Reichstag Fire where the Democrats help the GOP pin the blame on the Democrats themselves.

There is no way out of this mess without shutting down or seizing control of the propaganda vehicles these nu-fascists are using, and that includes Twitter. But how do you even do that now without playing right into the “deep state” conspiracy these terrorists continuously yell about? Similarly, sending Trump to prison now rather than right after January 6th is only going to embolden that movement. Our “lesser evil” party has failed in every possible sense.

I’m also extremely concerned about how quickly and loudly Musk is using Twitter as a means to get around the donation and advertising restrictions that are in place for elections. On his Substack, Matt Taibbi revealed just how much involvement Musk had in shaping that story, making it abundantly clear that Taibbi is a full blown political operative now instead of anything resembling a journalist. Taibbi has already promised more “episodes” of the “Twitter Files,” but with Musk gloating about how he views his acquisition of Twitter as a license to dredge up whatever private correspondence serves as ammunition for his political aims, we are undoubtedly going to see the most chaotic and disruptive political contest of our lifetimes and possibly of the entire American lifetime. What do you predict will be next? Who else do you think is going to reveal themselves to be a Musk crony? How long before Matty Y gets his own “Twitter Files”?

Kim: I mean, I’m pretty worried! Trump is never, ever going to jail; I’ve always been sure of that much. The Democrats are as impotent as you say. Maybe worse, they’re overconfident because they didn’t fail as badly as expected at the midterms. Post-Obama, scraping by or just not losing egregiously is what they count as a mandate. And the superior smug shrill tone of the pundits on MSNBC throughout this latest series of episodes with Trump suggests that the center thinks this has been some sort of turning point. Which is what they always think.

 

 

 

I agree with you that what Musk is doing with the Twitter Report(s) is scary and so far it seems that almost everyone is underestimating the significance of that, too. Just because we don’t care about Hunter Biden’s laptop, “lock[ing] her up,” etc. doesn’t mean it’s no big deal. It literally doesn’t matter that there’s nothing there of substance. As we’ve talked about, content matters, but meaning is vestigial. “Hunter’s laptop” is like a fight song at a sporting event. Matt Taibbi’s credibility doesn’t matter because he’s singing their song. His background at outlets like Rolling Stone is an asset in the same way that Glenn Greenwald’s background is an asset when he goes on Tucker Carlson. So far as I can tell, there is no one who seems more credible to the other side than a media personality who has defected from their party. That’s true on both sides, actually. That’s half the anchors on MSNBC. So those are the types that seem like the obvious candidates for joining Taibbi at Musk News. We already know he approached Bari Weiss. Alex Berenson? Any of these anti-establishment types who pander to the right. Probably not Greenwald, but he’s a spiritual advisor. The script writes itself.

 

I agree that shutting down the propaganda is the lever here. I don’t know if there’s a way to go about that on the federal side, just in terms of their practical tools. The government has stayed way behind on regulating Big Tech, so the idea that they could find a timely way to deal with these new developments is pretty far-fetched. I know some people think that Musk is going to be in deep trouble with the Federal Trade Commission for not complying with its consent order, but that seems real shaky to me. 

 
So that brings us full circle, back to our original questions about where we even are with the Twitterpocalypse. Namely, when is Twitter gonna die? And how? The existential threat seems to have been all but forgotten on the timeline, but the company is plainly still in serious financial distress. The service is spotty, but working better than I expected. And as of Saturday night (when I’m writing this response) (…because I’m cool), Musk claims that advertisers are coming back. While his posturing may contain a seed of truth, reports say that Twitter’s revenue is nowhere near normal. So what do you think, is the Twitterpocalpyse still on track? Or do we need to reconsider?

Nick: I think the Twitterpocalypse is definitely still on track because the platform continues to hemorrhage active users and is boosting the activity of other platforms in the process, even massively uncool platforms like LinkedIn. On top of that, there are the ongoing security and public safety concerns, which are now amplified since Musk publicly admitted to sifting through private correspondence for ammunition. If 2024 doesn’t go the way Trump and Musk want, I think Musk has placed a giant crosshair on himself, too, and if Twitter isn’t a rotting corpse by then he will almost certainly carve it up as much as he can to save himself. I don’t exactly trust his claims about the return of advertisers, either; even if Apple has come back the odds that they are still putting as much money into the platform as before are next to nil. If Twitter was actually doing well and entities like Apple were not as much of a concern, I don’t think Musk would be spending as much time as he has been promising everything is just fine.

At this point, what I’m most curious about is who else Musk is going to suck into the vortex with him. The Kanye reinstatement experiment flamed out even quicker than expected so I suspect Musk is desperately trying to find a more malleable toxic celebrity to enlist because he seems to rightly assume Twitter’s best asset right now is its status as Must See (Trash) TV. What could be next? A New Year’s Eve Twitter Circle Extravaganza featuring Louis CK, R Kelly and Bill Cosby and exploding Teslas in place of fireworks? The sky’s the limit!

Kim: Maybe Dave Chapelle will do a special! Men’s rights terf comedy is probably Twitter’s most viable path to solvency at this point. 

 

Well, I think that about sums up where we are in the Twitterpocalypse. To quote Ye, “It ain’t funny anymore.” Thanks for reading, and if you haven’t left Twitter yet, you can follow Nick Hanover @nick_hanover and Kim O’Connor at @shallowbrigade.