Almost immediately, I knew this was going to be a big deal. I was at a picnic in 2009 and I had just downloaded an app on my phone with a funny little bird icon. Facebook was blowing up at the time and we were all busy populating the service with all of our photos and personal details that would swiftly be monetized.
I saw a tweet about Michael Jackson and that he had died. I put the phone back in my pocket only to pull it out a few minutes later. There was another tweet. The King of Pop had died. Almost immediately, a stream of tributes and updates and reactions filled the little phone in my hand. Surely this hadn’t happened, right? I went to CNN’s website – nothing. I went to Facebook – also nothing. Then, word started to circulate at the picnic and within an hour we were all talking about the news that had come from our phones.
It was over three hours before any major media outlet confirmed it – a glacially long time in what was now time measured by tweets. It clicked that Twitter was going to be a thing.
This was the same service that helped me get through the Kansas City Royals season of 2009 that included such names as Jose Guillen, Billy Butler, and a young Zack Greinke. They finished 65-97 and every one of those games, I sat on the couch with a laptop and talked to a handful of diehard Royals fans in a Twitter community with an account making fun of manager Trey Hillman.
You know what happened next. Twitter started, as most good ideas do, with people at the center. Twitter is now failing because, as most bad ideas do, the company has fallen into the hands of an egomaniacal billionaire centered around the dollar with next to no clue as to why the service worked in the first place.
Twitter is responsible for uprisings – both good and bad – and it’s responsible for marriages – both begun and ended. It was meant to be the world’s town square – but it’s been bulldozed and turned into a shopping mall that charges a cover.
Soon, Twitter will be a paragraph in a history book alongside the “early Internet” services like AOL, CompuServe, and MySpace. It is sad to see that happen to the place where I could argue about starting Mike Aviles over Tony Pena Jr. at 11:30 at night with fans across the globe.
But the Royals will still be argued about – it’ll just be on something new whether that be Mastodon, Facebook, or something yet to be created. You see, anything can be a town square – you just need the people.
For now, you can still find me @thefakened on Twitter. But if you’re so inclined, you can also find me @thefakened@mastodon.cloud.
No, I don’t know how it works yet. Yes, they’re called “toots” instead of “tweets.” And no, I can’t help figure it out for you. Like me, it will either just click or it won’t.
(Catch Chris Kamler on Elon Musk’s tweet machine as @TheFakeNed)