Leaving Twitter

Why digital communication is anti-communication

[Note to readers: the following is NOT the text I announced with a certain full-bodied pathos in my last post. I have decided not to publish it.

By way of an explanation: Saint-Simon (not the socialist, but his distant 17^th century relative) wrote his memoirs – a vast work, thousands and thousands of pages on the machinations in the court of Louis XIV – knowing he could not publish it during his lifetime, because he wanted to say what he really thought of everyone, and what they did. It was published posthumously, in the 19^th century. Reading it, as a friend recently assured me, makes one understand how Saint-Simon could both care enough to keep writing over decades and accept that he could never publish. The friend also said: “These inside stories are such a necessary part of making sense of history, and yet the more truthful they are, the less they can be told at the time.”

But let’s move on:]

Contrary to Katherine Dee’s recent prophecy that I would never leave Twitter[1]  – and neither will you or anyone else – I am fact leaving. The time is ticking on my deactivation status, and even too slow if you ask me.

While Twitter may be my ex (“X”)-social media platform, there were clear flashes of the hellsite’s morphing into something even more sinister than Censorship Twitter (2020-2022) in the past weeks, with WEF-Linda’s announcement of plans to turn “X” into an “everything app” including your banking, several suspensions and bans, and its readiness to go after single-digit accounts after they were “exposed” by German Green Party NGOs like Grüne Netzfeuerwehr (Green Internet Fire Brigade) and #hetzlichendank as “inciting right-wing violence”, which apparently consisted in their garnishing their profile picture with a German flag stylized in the rainbow flag to counter Pride Month (and which made them an easy target for the dozens, if not hundreds of left-wing censorship brigades on Twitter that have sprung up like mushrooms on a rainy autumn day).    

Having used Twitter/X for over three years, my dignity has also become shattered. This is on account not only of the particularities of Twitter prose – on which more below – but of sharing the company of such obvious cringelords like block cock Peter Hotez or digital court jester Keith Olberman, not to name Jason Stanley, Mehdi Hasan and others I am too ashamed to remember (Yanis Varoufakis’s recent “trans rights” advocacy?- exactly) and who – though being blocked or muted - would simply pop up in my feed without my consent. Who in their right mind would you want to be confronted with the thought-defying mind ejaculations by a Margarete Stokowski or voluntarily undergo the emetic revulsions that follow from even only fleetingly acknowledging Karin Göring-Eckardt’s account?

Protecting one’s dignity – and self-composure - is important. Especially the latter is difficult when you deal with certain anon impostors who for some reason think they know a thing about you or two which may “compromise” your reputation that only they believe actually exists. On top of it all, it gives you no satisfaction whatsoever to ponder the fact that you live rent free in their head.

The main motivation for leaving Twitter and renouncing my “proximity to Social Capital” (Dee) – as though I’ve ever had anything like that – is that it has always been a terrible medium for conveying one’s ideas. This is not because the short form of linguistic expression would be somewhat counterproductive to the intent – aphorisms, for example, can be quite complex – but because Twitter itself was never meant for conveying ideas at all. For some inexplicable reason, I thought I’d still give it a try, which was probably as naïve as thinking you could use a vacuum cleaner as a hairdryer. No, Twitter was conceptualised as the single most gigantic platform for confirmation bias there is. It was meant a platform to finally give confirmation bias its appropriate material form. You cannot learn a single thing from it; and by learn I do not mean clicking on and reading the interesting piece in American Affairs or – why not – UnHerd that confirms your ideas anyway. This process is neither learning nor holding your ideas to the test. It’s checking out who is in your group of imaginary gang members and who isn’t. In other words, it’s boring, which makes yourself become a boring person. To no longer have an interesting thought of your own is a sign of becoming a boring old fart. You do that when you 1) stop reading, and – more importantly – 2) stop talking to people, even if just on the phone. I cannot count the many times I called to have a chit chat on the phone with a friend or the other, but they tell me they are busy, only to find them posting on Twitter.

Language and communication order our cognitive and intellectual horizon. Twitter only makes me want to smoke crack, to paraphrase 90s icon Beck, and not even good crack. It makes me think in “hot takes” while I shop for groceries or clean the bathroom. I have begun to think in acronyms at best, monosyllables at worse times. Intellectual endeavour is stifled, curiosity too easily satisfied – but not really. Intellectual curiosity itself underwent concept creep: you care less and less for the relevant nexus, the piercing of thought by concrete experience and conceptual reflection, and instead focus entirely on the “optics”. In other words, you linguistically simulate the obsession of association with certain people, with a certain good look, with the correct use of inside lingo. Instead of constantly transforming language – and to what end, anyway? – the use of insider lingo ossifies language itself. Language becomes redundant with Twitter prose: it is no longer meant to persuade or convince. As an acquainted linguistic critic recently put it, “language is no longer elaborated on because it is a form of expression of cognition or truth, but only so that it serves the respectively prescribed self-fulfilling purpose as efficiently as possible.” He continues:

“Talking with others is no longer done to contradict the other, or to convince, challenge, seduce them, or even to be led astray from the path on which one believes oneself safe; but only to assign one's own and the other's opinion in a direction as to make sure not a thought might lurk in it. The neutralisation of thought and speech through its redirection to digital media, which has taken on coercive traits during the pandemic (online tutorials, online lectures, Zoom meetings, "digital learning"), accommodates the need to permanently disseminate oneself about everything without ever having to reckon with consequences, with real answers. Digital communication is anti-communication.”

Of course, Twitter shares this with all social media, but none of the others quite have Twitter’s exclusivity stamp. It is true that Twitter “isn’t an everyman platform—it’s the blogger’s platform, the journalist’s platform, the politico’s platform, the culture commenter’s platform, the would-be public intellectual’s platform.” (Dee). But I am none of that. And I have no interest in becoming any of it.

The prospect of leaving Twitter but having reasonable grounds for hoping to keep my thought processes alive in exchange for my departure, is neither terrifying nor reassuring. If “X” marks the spot and indeed becomes the dystopian social credit and censorship tool Elon Musk has warned everyone about in other actors, then good riddance, obviously. CJ Hopkins has expressed these concerns for a while now.[2] I am not a true believer in any direction. I have always thought of Elon Musk as a boy who likes to play, a tech bro playboy, without the sexual component, obviously (as though that needed any emphasis). I also thought he was somewhat more human, and that is, more vulnerable to enticing offers that would both enhance his interest in play stuff and, more easily hidden to his rather naïve view of society, be conducive to introducing tools of control. He seems to have been rather taken aback by the backlash after his Linda hire. There was no pre-formulated statement, much rather helpless stammering in her defence. This is revealing. Elon is not the boss. He lets people take over who can entertain him. “X” might very well become dangerous for civil freedom, but playfully so. Yet, my reasons for leaving have nothing to do with it – to the contrary. I would have been curious to see how that plays out.

In the future, you will find my writings here, but not mainly. New and exciting projects have been left at my doorstep, and I have picked them up. For instance, I am helping with the groundwork for a new political magazine that I am looking forward to being part of. None of it will be easy, and none of it will mean financial security. But it will mean that I can think for myself and not on behalf of others. It will also mean I can and will write more, more freely, and in more challenging and thought-provoking formats.

This is perhaps the right moment to say thank you to my increasing number of paying subscribers. As you will have noticed, my posts are all free, but you show me that you appreciate my work, which means more to me than words can say. Thank you.

And see you around.

Cover: video still for Captain Sensible’s “Wot” (1983).

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[1] https://compactmag.com/article/why-you-re-never-leaving-twitter

[2]

The "Free-Speech Twitter" PSYOP