Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the unfolding chaos has rivalled anything that TV or streaming services have had to offer.
Elon Musk described Twitter as the ‘digital town square’ — only now, it’s got dirty linen hanging all over it.
By: Editorial
Updated: November 17, 2022 8:12:15 am
At $44 billion, it is the most expensive show ever made. Reams of paper and an infinite number of bytes have been devoted, over the last two decades, to discussing whether or not we’re in the Golden Age of Content, citing shows such as Better Call Saul, Game of Thrones, Succession, Squid Game and BoJack Horseman. But the biggest and most compelling show of all is on view only now, in real time, on the most unexpected of platforms.
Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the unfolding chaos has rivalled anything that TV or streaming services have had to offer. Think Daenerys Targaryen suddenly raining dragon fire on King’s Landing was a bonkers twist? It was nothing compared to Musk laying off an employee on Twitter at the end of a long, heated and very public back-and-forth during the course of which the latter called out the new owner’s lack of technical knowledge. This comes on the heels of other displays of Musk’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach to management: Traipsing into HQ with a sink in his hands and then proceeding to fire half the workforce, threatening to name and shame advertisers who pulled their business from his new business and suspending the accounts of users who criticise him.
There’s a certain poetry in the unravelling of Twitter’s internal chaos, in full view of the world, on Twitter. The success of the microblogging platform was precisely this: When other social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn and WhatsApp were leveraging the power of “networking” or building communities, like Reddit, Twitter allowed individuals to broadcast their thoughts and feelings to the whole world, with an audience that could include anyone, from the new king of England to their school friend. It is the “digital town square”, Musk once said— only now, it’s got dirty linen hanging all over it.
© The Indian Express (P) Ltd