As you may have noticed from the title of this column, I still call ‘X’ ‘Twitter’, and that’s one of the reasons I haven’t closed my account yet: a powerful nostalgia. When I joined in 2011, Twitter was a bustling social network with a lot of social prestige; the perfect place to create online communities around shared interests, communities that often spill over into real life. I myself have very good friends I met through Twitter (some of whom work at this newspaper, by the way).
Aside from nostalgia, let’s be honest, many of us aren’t leaving Twitter because of our egos. We’ve built a user base through our posts; people who genuinely care about us, people who care about us too. Why start from scratch on another social network when you’ve already almost paid off your mortgage on this one? There’s a third factor: the lack of an attractive alternative. When Zuckerberg launched Threads, he said it would be a place like Twitter, but “wisely run.” The truth is that Threads is wisely run, yes, but it almost immediately became a pointless network full of influencers sharing their gym routines and beauty tips. And then there’s another big factor: resistance. As journalist Carmela Ríos says, staying on Twitter is almost a matter of democratic rebellion.
