Thread Bare: Social Media Finally Has No Clothes
Meta's Twitter-killer gives us the social network we deserve
This week, the world got just what it wanted, a glimmering new social media platform. But of course, as usual, there is a gaping distance between what we want and what we need.
Since Elon Musk bought Twitter, the social media platform's only real content has been about how much everyone hates Twitter now. The Extremely Online cool kids of Twitter only exist when they have an agreed-upon object of scorn. And Elon Musk's ego is a divine gift for these people. Musk has made himself into the One Punching Bag to Rule Them All.
Then Twitter's arch-rival dropped a bomb this week. Meta, which was called Facebook when the old people were young, introduced Threads this week. Threads is an offshoot of Instagram and uses the same color scheme. When it opens, in addition to the familiar preening photos and videos, you'll see textual posts that look almost exactly like Twitter. As for now, there doesn't seem to be hashtagging or lists or trending topics or anything that can help you focus your scrolling on any specific content.
That makes me wonder whether Mark Zuckerberg has finally unlocked the ultimate truth of social media.
It's not really about the content, and perhaps it never was; it's about the delivery. I'm convinced that Marshall McLuhan has been proven largely right about the Medium being the Message.
In its era of dominance, Twitter convinced everyone that the conversations that took place there were important. Whatever your position was in the social justice culture war, Twitter was assumed to be an engine of ideas. Some distance from all the flotsam and jetsam has convinced me that, at some point, it had all become a front. The content of the discourse, no matter how important everyone insisted it was, was actually incidental. The point was the style with which the lines were delivered. Kind of like watching an old, silent movie where the actors used exaggerated motions to convey meaning. And the thrill for most users (or shall I say used) was not in affecting any real social change. It was in being retweeted by someone famous. That was what became real for users of the site.
So enters Threads.
It's entirely fitting that the purported Twitter-killer will do the deed by dropping all pretense to content. The app seems to exist mainly to see the typewritten words of your favorite images on Instagram. And the joy with which it is all being received has become quickly baffling to me. What was the appeal of posts like this?
This is the replacement for the engine of social change and "true community" that Elon Musk destroyed with his man-child tantrums? This is what people wanted?
If Twitter's Muskformation was tragic because what was lost was really valuable information needed for social transformation, then why wasn't the Twitter-killer something like a justice-oriented LinkedIn? Why not take all that righteous energy to Reddit boards? Why not form Slack channels to organize "real change" and "authentic community?"
The answer is simple. Those things are all pretty boring in the end. This is why the enthusiasm for Mastodon dried up as soon as people started using the site in the early days of Musk’s Twitter. These boring platforms don't emphasize the act of being seen while saying righteous things, which I argue is the genius of Threads.
Mark Zuckerberg and his team finally realized that being seen and worshipped as a graven image is what people really truly desired. The sanctimony and moral panics were just an ethos-building cover story for the real goal: popularity. The problem with Twitter was the cover story for all the posturing -- the political wrangling and the calling out of violators of the Social Good. The "content" of Twitter made the attention-seeking increasingly vitriolic and nasty. The goose had choked on its own golden eggs. When Musk took over, instead of employing the Heimlich, he tried stuffing more eggs down its throat.
The solution was right there all the time. I can't believe no one thought of it before. Let's make a Twitter that satisfies the need to be adored but let's make it without any content at all. What if Twitter were just celebrities living their best lives and influencers wielding ironic, substanceless wit?
Threads. I admire the honest genius of it. The rhetoric of memes and the familiar tweet structures (“This!” “Delete Your Account…”) that drove the stardom of the society of old Blue-Checks is utterly portable it turns out. It didn't need the heavy, divisive political content that was making everyone miserable at all. All most people really wanted was to be seen. Get rid of the means of providing a focused conversation and the fires of hatred will extinguish themselves. Let the wit and exquisite beauty of legions of Instagram influencers become their own content, just as Elon Musk has become the content of Twitter. It’s all signifiers that signify nothing.
The incentive to get nasty evaporates into nothingness when the next bright, shiny object is just a swipe away.
Swipe swipe swipe away into blissful, happy oblivion. Lovingly, erotically pull on the Thread until the fabric disappears. You've already agreed to the Terms and Conditions.
Use Threads and think I’m wrong? Leave a comment.
Threads reminds of the basement scene in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure:
"The mind plays tricks on you... You play tricks back!... It's like you're unraveling a big cable-knit sweater that someone keeps knitting and knitting and knitting...."
I don’t want to make this all about me, but, since joining Threads, I’ve so been living the best version of myself that I’ve no time left for any others - versions or people. 😘😘😘😘😘😘😘