Well Elmo's made a right horlicks out of Twitter hasn't he? After turning one of the most recognisable brands on the globe into a meaningless letter, presumably the result of a bet that it wasn't possible to come up with a worse rebrand than Conquistador Instant Leprosy, and loosing every banned lunatic to vomit disinformation, he's started picking fights with entire countries.
His determined efforts to enshittify the place are finally bearing fruit as even diehard Twitterites are jacking it in, or at least greatly reducing their presence. I haven't abandoned it entirely, yet, more out of habit than anything else, though I'm checking in increasingly infrequently as there's less and less of interest. Where once it was a combination of blogroll, news feed, jokes and commentary it's now more of a post-apocalyptic wasteland where you might scavenge a moderately amusing gag before a gang of blue-ticked twats sweep through.
It's all about networks and connections, as they break down they're difficult to replicate elsewhere. It's rather like a big, busy guild in a popular MMO where you know there'll be a team on the go whenever you log in, but then new developers take the game in a different direction (maybe they try and introduce, say, a Game Experience that's New) that isn't terribly popular. Some people absolutely hate it and quit immediately, others stick around but aren't playing so much so the groups are trickier to find. There are other MMOs out there but nobody quite agrees what the best alternative is; some splinter groups form new guilds, but none quite get the traction of the original and it all fades away.
Mastodon had a bit of a head start as an alternative to Twitter, but doesn't quite seem to have picked up a critical mass; Bluesky has a nicely freewheeling nature but doesn't seem to have the appeal for organisations; Threads has the weight of Meta behind it and more corporate posting but a slightly odd vibe that hasn't really clicked yet. Oh well, at least that's more time to finish off Baldur's Gate 3.
