The lost thread

An indus­tri­alist might soon pur­chase Twitter, Inc. His sub­stan­tial suc­cess launching reusable space­craft does nothing to pre­pare him for the chal­lenge of building social spaces. The latter calls on every lib­eral art at once, while the former is just rocket science.

Arguing about the future of Twitter is a loser’s game; a dead end. The plat­form’s only con­clu­sion can be abandonment: an overdue MySpace-ification.

Fea­tures come and go, little embroi­deries and fascinations, but the time­line remains, Twitter’s deepest warp. It has been there from the start, its logic invisible, inescapable, non-negotiable. (Fleets were different, weren’t they? Yes — and their quick demise had the feeling of an immune response.)

There are so many ways people might relate to one another online, so many ways exchange and con­vivi­ality might be organized. Look at these screens, this wash of pixels, the liquid potential! What a colossal bummer that Twitter eked out a local maximum; that its net­work effect still (!) con­sumes the fuel for other pos­si­bil­i­ties, other explorations.

I’m not here to say you should quit Twitter, or that no enjoy­ment remains in cavorting through the net­work. I’m only here to say, Twitter has no future, so please, enjoy it only and exactly for what it is — every decline is surfable — and do not dis­re­gard the alter­na­tives to its time­line, when and if they appear.

The amount that Twitter omits is breathtaking. More than any other social plat­form, it is indif­ferent to huge swaths of human expe­ri­ence and endeavor. I invite you to imagine this omitted con­tent as a vast, bustling city. Scratching at your time­line, you are hud­dled in a single small tavern with the journalists, the nihilists, and the chaotic neutrals.

As a writer, looking for evi­dence of read­er­ship and engage­ment on Twitter makes you into the drunk looking for your lost keys under the street light.

Many people don’t want to quit because they worry: without my Twitter account, who will listen to me? In what way will I matter to the world beyond my apartment, my office, my family? I believe these hes­i­ta­tions reveal some­thing totally unre­lated to Twitter, and if you find your­self fret­ting in this way, I will gently sug­gest that it’s worth questing a bit to dis­cover what you’re really wor­ried about.

The speed with which Twitter recedes in your mind will shock you. Like a demon from a folktale, the kind that only gains power when you invite it into your home, the plat­form melts like mist when that invi­ta­tion is rescinded.

I’ll repeat myself. Twitter’s only con­clu­sion can be abandonment: an overdue MySpace-ification. I am totally con­fi­dent about this prediction, but that’s an easy confidence, because in the long run, we’re all MySpace-ified. The only question, then, is how many more pos­si­bil­i­ties will go unexplored? How much more time will be wasted?

Wishful descrip­tions of Twitter as “the de facto public town square” or “the closest thing we have to a global consciousness” sound, to me, like Peter Pan beg­ging the audi­ence to clap and raise a swooning Tinkerbell.

You don’t have to clap.