As of April 25, 2022, Elon Musk is now Twitter's official owner.
I don't have any hot takes regarding Twitter's new evil overlord. Many people have said more about the situation than I ever could. All I know is I don't think a guy who made headlines for killing monkeys by implanting electrodes into their brains is a guy I'd want running any company, whether or not he made it.
I do have, somewhat nebulous, plans to leave Twitter. I'm not making a statement. I'm not going out in the public forums and declaring, "Elon Musk sucks, and he's going to take Twitter down, and you'll all be sorry." Even though I think that's absolutely true. This is a simple act of rebellion, an act of telling anyone who will listen that I don't want to be on a platform run by someone so thoughtless and cruel. I'm doing this because I know I'll feel guilty if I don't.
Not that long ago, someone who made music I really loved started selling NFTs. I've said my piece on them, but it took me until about three days ago to decide to unsubscribe from them and delete all of their videos from my watch later playlist. I love their music, but my conscious doesn't want to listen to music written by a scam artist.
I'm feeling many of the same things I felt when I saw that artist getting involved in NFTs. My brain keeps saying that whether or not I delete my account, it won't matter at all. I'm just one person on twitter, one person with a little over one hundred tweets and one follower to my name. But the part of my brain that handles emotions keeps saying that that's just an excuse to stay on a platform that, despite being a raging dumpster fire, brings a small amount of joy to an otherwise dismal existence. It's why, despite the fact that Facebook is in many ways worse than Twitter, I still have a Facebook account.
In spite of all evidence to the contrary, I try to believe in the power of people to change the world around them. I don't mean in the sense that people can boycott, protest, or condemn things. I mean in the sense that we can choose to buy things or not buy things at Walmart, to watch or not watch things on YouTube, to say or not say something online. Maybe I'm just immensely stupid, but I feel like those actions, those choices, do matter in the long run, even if it doesn't look like it at the time. Put it another way, we only vote during elections, and we only get one vote apiece, but that somehow matters a lot more than pushing the rest of the year, in whatever way we can manage.
I'm not a naturally hopeful person, and I'm tired of being forced to choose between doing the moral thing and doing something I know will make me feel better. More and more, I'm being forced to make that choice, and every time I do, I'm glad that I have so little to lose that doing the right thing won't affect my quality of life that much. Can I just say I think that's so wrong? To be in a system where you're punished for doing what you're "Supposed" to do? If I had an active presence on any social media platform prior to this point, it would be much harder, if not impossible to leave. If I had a job and my own house, I'd have to worry about losing that job constantly, and if what I've read online is correct I'd be scared that I would someday be unable to work. As it is, I'm stuck at home a lot, but I don't have to worry about food, or clothes, or utilities. The Government kept telling us that if they provided us with a safety net, we'd just leap off the tightrope the first chance we got. What they conveniently forgot about was the fact that a lot of people would just choose not to climb up to the top, and any performers who fell would be unable to perform again.
If I honestly thought people were happy, I'd still complain but I'd at least be assured that if I ever wanted to participate, I could make it work. But we have a system where everyone's miserable and only those who won't or can't participate can complain. Yet I keep hearing people say that the system is okay, we just need to tweak it a bit to get rid of the worst part. Never mind that the worst parts include woman making a lot less then men, people getting shot by police for being non-white, disabled people being shut out of everywhere because they can't do things "normal" people can do, people being overworked and underpaid, workers playing Russian Roulette every time they attempt to find work, workers having no say at their jobs, broken justice system, and to top it off a rise in authoritarianist sentiments among the right within a system that can't meaningfully condemn it. How on earth can we fix this system? Are we just pretending we can because the alternative could be a lot worse?
I don't know if we can fix the system. I don't know if we can build a better system if we destroy this one. What I do know is that I don't want to accept a system that' s failing this badly. All throughout my childhood, I was told about the importance of being yourself. Why can't we build a system where that's possible for everyone?
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