EPISODE 713: DOES ANYONE STILL HAVE A KEVIN?
GOTTA STAY PRAYED UP
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
If you had “Insane tech billionaire buys Twitter and destroys it before he even took over” on your 2022 Bingo Card, Bravo you, because I gotta say, I did not see that coming.
Twitter, or as it is affectionately known by its users, “this hellscape,” has a problem, and it rhymes with “People go there and say horrible things to strangers, especially women, queer people and minorities.” You can be anonymous there in a way you can’t on Facebook, and that has created a space where a lot of people feel unsafe.
Bizarrely it’s also been a pretty vibrant community of smart and talented people doing their thing. I would go so far as to say that it’s built to be a generous space in a way that Facebook is not. Facebook first and foremost wants you to talk about your own life; post photos, tell us your status; share your likes and hates. That’s the kind of information it can sell and that generates more sharing, liking and hating.
Twitter tends much more toward the “I wrote this” and “here’s a funny joke for you,” “as a professional historian, here’s 15 things you need to know about what’s going on right now” (and also, “Actually here’s why you suck”). The Facebook algorithm actively downgrades things like articles or videos in favor of personal sharing. Twitter is all about sharing that stuff.
Elon Musk has been saying for a long time that he’s not interested in content moderation, that he considers it an infringement on free speech. Now when he comes to running the company, will he actually shut all that down? We won’t know for a while, as the process of finalize the purchase could take months. But it is true that in the days after the sale was agreed upon, hundreds of thousands of left-leaning people left the service, and apparently quite a few right-leaning people—maybe as many?--joined it.
Charlie Warzel, who writes for the Atlantic and created the great newsletter called Galaxy Brain, laid out the three likely options of what will happen to the service. The first is like those islands of trash in the ocean known as Garbage Patches: Musk will pretty much eliminate all moderation, and the refuse which that allows will slowly choke the entire service to death. Fun!
The second, the Experimental Universe option, is that Musk will basically act like a god in Greek mythology, randomly messing with our experience just to see what happens. Whee!
And the third, which I called Bored Trump, involves the service going back to the craziness of a few years ago, just with Musk in the place of Trump, randomly tweeting insane stuff that gets people crazy.
Ugh.
Warzel thinks the latter is both the best case and most likely. But I’d say based on the number of people who have left and joined the service just since Warzel wrote that, we maybe should be considering a fourth option, which I’m going to call Flash Charlottesville, where right wingers basically rush the site and it all goes very bad fast.
Stay tuned, I guess?
If you’re interested, I got to be a part of a conversation with some of the other staff at America about the change, and what it means for Catholics.
The sad summary: Catholic Twitter can be pretty terrible even right now with content moderation.
Also do your crunches.
This week in interesting human interest stories, bringing birthday cake to the dentist you have a crush on. The tl;dr: Do not do not do not respond to the flirtations of people who have any authority over you. It never goes well.
Also the story of Wynn Bruce, the climate change activist who burned himself to death on the steps of the Supreme Court last week. Pretty much no one initially covered his death, which is pretty crazy when you consider where he did it. The Post does a good job of exploring who this man was.
And there’s this wonderful interview with Broadway actors about their pre- and post-stage habits. I especially love those who talk about wanting to be the last person to leave the theater.
WOW WOW WOWS
Is it me or is basically everything being released RIGHT NOW? It’s not just on television either; Broadway has so much new stuff all opening right this second, before the Tony nominations.
Couple things I’m paying attention to:
OZARK: Last 7 episodes, y’all. I’m three in, and my reactions thus far are really just that Ruth is Everything and Wendy is the Worst. Also I want Charlotte to get a spinoff where she sits in coffee shops and has nothing to do with her parents ever again.
WE’RE HERE: I know I mentioned this last week, but man is the show good. This is me SO OFTEN watching:
These amazing queens go to places where they are absolutely going to be rejected or mocked and just treat everyone they meet with such welcome and decency. To me there’s something so deeply kind (and from my religious perspective, Christian) about them.
WE OWN THIS CITY: An 80s song by Starship, or the new David Simon series that returns to Baltimore, cops, politicians and drug dealers?
Does it really matter?
Hollywood Reporter did a great interview with Simon and others about the new show.
BETTER CALL SAUL: It’s back, it’s hella dark and you can start to see what’s maybe going to happen with Kim, so also it’s scary and amazing.
THREE TWEETS….
If you have a Kevin that you need disposed of…
This is an old thread that Holmes recently reposted. I love reading through it.
Sometimes Memes are So True They Hurt:
…AND A YOUTUBE
Really love this.
Rohan Salmond, who runs the Modern Relics Substack, was kind enough to recommend my newsletter recently.
I want to repay the favor! Their work, like mine, combines pop culture and religion. And if you just check out their homepage I think you’ll see just how much fun they’re having. (Thank you, Rohan!)
Remember this week to take time just to be. Sometimes we don’t even know how much we’re racing until we stop.
See you next Sunday!
PS Did you see Trevor Noah’s set at the Correspondents’ Dinner? Pretty great.