Comparing all of us tweeting through the end of Twitter to the band playing on the deck of the Titanic is a little too romantic, in my opinion. If anything we’re in our life preservers, popping in and out of the frozen water, yelling “AND ANOTHER THING!” before bobbing below the frigid waves.
Twitter dying has been weird. It’s been weird because my dumb ass got myself locked for a week after saying the men on Love is Blind deserved to die (which I stand by thank you very much) but that’s not the only reason. It’s almost been like a reckoning with mortality. Specifically, the mortality of a platform that has been such an important part of my life.
I’ve talked before about online friendships and their importance in my life and without Twitter, I don’t think I’d have any of those friendships in my life. I’ve made lifelong friends, fallen in (and out of) love, made enemies – the whole range of human emotions. I remember where I was for pivotal events, from shootings to celebrity deaths to boats stuck in the Suez Canal (ok just one of those) and guess what? I was on Twitter for all of them.
For better or worse, Twitter has shaped me into the person I am today. While in the depths of an unhappy relationship, I found confidence and the courage to be myself. I was able to strengthen my political values and views through Twitter as I was able to follow those with different life experiences and different perspectives. Twitter made me a more critical thinker, more compassionate, and more self-aware.
Whenever I begin to feel silly about mourning the eventual death of Twitter, I remember the porn purge of Tumblr and the near-death of the platform. The destruction it caused to online communities, how art was lost, and accounts nuked from the site with no warning. Losing these online spaces, however imperfect they are, is detrimental to marginalized communities online. Think of the organization that will be lost with the death of Twitter, the communication lines that will be cut between activists.
Twitter has been with me since high school. I’ve bounced around accounts, tried to use it as a professional, and re-invented myself a few times, but it’s always been there. It’s going to be very weird when it no longer is.
What I’m Reading:
Rethinking Fandom: How to Beat the Sports-Industrial Complex at Its Own Game
Sometimes books find you at exactly the right time. Rethinking Fandom landed on my Libby shelf just as the Toronto Maple Leafs were in the midst of a disastrous California road trip and, speak of the devil, Twitter was a mess. The sky is often falling in leafs nation, like how it’s always raining in Forks, Washington, but this time it felt a little more intense. Rethinking Fandom not only provided a welcome release from hockey-centred doomscrolling but an affirmation of how I have chosen to reevaluate my relationship with sports in recent years.
Breaking down the sports-industrial complex and how it has taken over sports as we know it, Rethinking Fandom explores everything from labour rights to interference in municipal politics to tanking for picks and how we need to reexamine our fandom both for ourselves and the betterment of sports as a whole.
If you want to see what else I’m reading, follow me on The StoryGraph!
Articles:
Kit Connor’s forced coming out and the problems of queer fandom
Aaron Carter Is Dead. He Left Behind A Tragic Legacy.
Justin Trudeau on ‘Drag Race’ is going to be cringe
Internet Shit:
Till next time!
xoxo, Liz