【2005 Archives】

There005 Archivesno way to know how many people are doomscrolling on Twitter during the Elon Musk era. But here's a good proxy statistic: the number of users following Doomscrolling Reminder Bot. It's just what it sounds like — a bot that will politely remind you to take a break from obsessively reading depressing news on the service. Created in 2021, the bot usually does modest numbers: a few dozen followers gained, or a handful lost, per day.

Then as Musk arrived at Twitter HQ on Wednesday, according to Social Blade, nearly 19,000 Twitter users suddenly decided they needed doomscrolling reminders. Another 3,200 needed them the next day, and then after a record-busting weekend for new doomscrollers, 3,400 tweeps followed the bot on Halloween.

Why might that be? Because Musk is "flooding the zone with shit," to use a favorite phrase of Trump ally Steve Bannon, in a manner not seen since Trump was on the service back in 2020. There are too many terrible signs of change for us to keep track of them all withoutdoomscrolling. The new CEO had already made Twitter take on $13 billion in debt as part of his purchase; a very Trumpian business tactic, and one that has a history of hollowing companies out.

But now Musk appears to have gone full MAGA. Not just in his politics or the accounts to which he responds, but in the sheer incompetent, impulsive, dictatorship-by-tweet chaos of it all. His constant need for attention beckons. And we, the users of Twitter, seem to have fallen into the same trap as we did in those dark days of 2017 — letting narcissistic provocations live rent-free in our heads.

Let's recap. Since taking over the world's most important high-speed communication platform, Musk has tweeted (then deleted without comment) misinformation about the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband (in Hillary Clinton's replies, of all places). He slammed one award-winning UK newspaper as a "far left wing propaganda machine" while essentially calling the New York Times fake news. Reports suggest he's reexamining Twitter's hate speech policy, particularly as it applies to trans people. At the personal behest of a former Trump lawyer, he appears to have quickly reinstated the account of a far-right GOP candidate in Arizona — who immediately tweeted antisemitic comments and support for insurrectionists.

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Meanwhile, to help service the debt Musk made Twitter take on, the new boss wants to make Twitter "blue check" verification marks a thing you can just buy — and have to keep paying for — at $20 a month. It's a disastrous proposal, as users keep telling Musk. The problem isn't having a premium tier of Twitter (there already was one, Twitter Blue); it's that Musk utterly misunderstands what blue checks do. They prove organizations, officials, celebrities, and reporters in the most dangerous parts of the world are who they say they are. They stop identity theft shenanigans.

Musk wants to devalue blue checks to the point where they simply mean "I'm paying $20 a month." In what universe does that make business sense? Probably the same one where Trump Steaks were a savvy move.

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Late on Halloween, Musk could actually be found haggling in the replies of the master of horror, Stephen King. The author said he'd quit the service on principle if the check was going to cost $20: "fuck that," said King, "they should pay me." His 7 million followers may well agree; King has dropped many a gem since arriving on the service in 2013, all for free.

Because that's the kind of place Twitter has been until now, a place for all kinds of creators to mix it up, share news, have fun, and endlessly entertain. You'd think a wannabe entertainer like Musk would get that, right? You'd think he'd at least make a show of respect for a globally-loved storyteller using his service?

Instead, Musk sounded like a character in a King short story, perhaps one titled The boy who missed the point. "How about $8?" he tweeted, and you could almost hear the rattling of a tin cup. "We need to pay the bills somehow," Musk pleaded, promising to "explain the rationale" at a later date. "Twitter cannot entirely rely on advertisers."

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He's right about that, especially now — because advertisers are feeling as frosty as King. General Motors suspended Twitter ads on Friday. According to The Information, Musk spent Monday in New York wooing the big accounts. But the big accounts, worth up to $100 million apiece of Twitter ad buys, are being advised by media buyers to hit pause on their Twitter campaigns until they can figure out what the hell is going on.

Twitter's ad revenue, last we heard, was $1.1 billion per quarter and falling slowly. If anything, Musk's busy week has accelerated the decline. Oh, and provided a fresh opportunity for phishing scams.

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What's the goal? What's the end game? Control the conversation or troll it? Prepare Twitter for take-off or deliberately crash it? Is he going to let Trump back on Twitter, perhaps just in time for the midterm elections — the ultimate MAGA dominance move — or does he want to be the new Trump himself?

And what exactly are we dealing with here? Is this an intuitive business genius, or a puerile bro who lucked into his position with daddy's money and has no clue how to run a media company? Is Musk playing 5-D chess, or is his supposed plan just a mess of random impulses?

These are seductive questions, and I'm as guilty as anyone of hosting that endless debate in my head. There is much to be said about Musk's pet philosophy, longtermism, but that's for another time. Because here's the thing: ultimately these are the same questions we asked about Trump.

Have we forgotten the lessons of living through that administration while being very online? At a certain point, we learned to stop asking them and just let history judge, because it didn't matter in the moment. What mattered was the work. What mattered was resisting and reversing the mess he was making, the democratic norms he was shredding, as much as possible.

What mattered was not being distracted by the daily outrage from an overarching goal — that of making the world seem sane again.

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In retrospect, it's obvious that Musk and Trump had the same skill set all along. They're both thin-skinned carnival barkers who like to shout about myriad future plans, few of which actually arrived. They both like to say and tweet whatever comes into their head. They both love Twitter because it let them only hear conclusions that reinforced their preexisting opinions; over time, that built them an echo chamber the size of Trump Tower and/or Starship.

There is, of course, a difference in magnitude. Musk hasn't mustered his stan army to attack the Capitol, at least not yet. But if he's taken chaotic evil lessons from the Trump era, if he believes that deliberate idiocy and distraction will mask any kind of plan — that trolls achieve goals — then we have reason to be worried indeed.

Even so, don't be afraid to strike a balance between being informed and taking necessary R&R; self-care is and always has been a political act. Which means we have more reason than ever to listen to doomscrolling reminders.

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