26: I Can't Seem To Quit

Last night I watched The Banshees of Inisherin, Martin McDonagh's latest film, about two men whose friendship sours overnight. Colm (Brendan Gleeson) simply does not want to spend time with Padraic (Colin Farrell) any more. At first, he won't explain himself to the bemused Padraic, who cannot fathom why his friend won't talk to him. The more Colm pushes Padraic away, the tighter Padraic holds on to the threads of their relationship, and everything Colm does to alienate Padraic only serves to tangle the knots more. Inisherin is a small town, after all, and it's difficult for the two to stay away from each other when there's only one pub and precious few others around. The Irish Civil War raging across the strait underlines their plight. Padraic and Colm are bound together by their history, even as they're kept apart by their inability to fully understand each other.

I told myself that this newsletter wouldn't be about Twitter, but it is about Twitter, in a way. The platform has an outsized place in political discourse, and the online lives of writers, while those who aren't on it simply don't care about it. Twitter denizens like to refer to the app as "the hell site," a place where everyone goes to be miserable and to clown on everyone else while they're at it. It's a nuance-sucking machine and a dumpster fire, an addictive scroll and a daily habit. It's a virtual pub in a surprisingly small town, replete with comedians and artists and drunks spewing nonsense and misinformation...but if you can find a few quiet corners, it's also possible to cultivate incidental friendships and communities based on good humor and shared interests. I've made many good friends there, and I've deepened some relationships in the day-in and day-out there as well. There are people I follow because we share the same interests, and others I follow because I do not understand them but I like the way they think.

Elon Musk bought Twitter and immediately tore down half the structure of the virtual pub. He fired half its employees, including the teams who were involved in maintaining a tenuous sense of ethics and reliability on a platform known for the spread of misinformation; he's single-handedly undermined any sense of reliability with his threats to change the (flawed but well-intentioned) verification system into a pay-to-play game. Musk's desire to turn verification into a subscription service is a naked attempt to make up the additional money he sank into buying the platform, and it also assumes a 100% conversion rate from previously verified users into paying users, and it also misinterprets the "verified" badge as a status symbol.

It's unclear how this all will play out, but thousands of people have lost their jobs at the whim of a billionaire who didn't really want to buy the platform anyway, and who doesn't know the first thing about running a social media website, and who really only wants the money and approval of his most desperate sycophants. It does feel like a fitting end for the dumpster fire: run into the ground by its richest user, a man who has no sense of subtlety or decorum, who can't see past himself and yet constantly courts the attention of everyone who follows him. I hate that I'm stuck watching all of this in real time, and I hate that I can't look away or make a clean break. It's as though a friend of mine has suddenly decided that they no longer want to talk, and yet we keep haunting the same places, unable to let go of each other.

I've never been an adult and not been on Twitter. It's how I got into movies in the first place; every single writing and podcasting gig I've ever had is thanks to a connection I made on the platform. I wouldn't have written my book if I hadn't made a dumb tweet about being able to talk about SF and religion first (my editor saw that tweet, called my bluff, and asked me to submit a proposal; the rest is history). Twitter is my newsfeed and rolodex, a loose collection of close friends and cordial acquaintances and a couple of frenemies. I'm not leaving until it's unusable, but I'm worried that it's going to become unusable next week. I know it's stupid to mourn the loss of a social media network, especially because the network still exists and I'm still on it. But it still feels as though part of the pub has burned down, and I'm stuck in the threshold with the others who want to leave and have nowhere else to go.

What I wrote:

I laid a piece of my heart bare in an essay for Bright Wall/Dark Room about After Yang. The film is about memory and love and loss in a family unit. I lost both of my paternal grandparents in the last year; After Yang refracted my grief in a way that I found illuminating.

What I talked about:

Kevin and I reviewed Armageddon Time on this week's episode of Seeing & Believing. It's a semiautobiographical movie, which is a subgenre of drama that I don't particularly love; I think this one is mostly good but has a fundamental flaw that I can't get around.

We also talked about Andrei Tarkovsky's Mirror for the podcast. Tarkovsky's one of my favorite filmmakers; his work is rich and difficult in a way that rewards repeat viewings and conversations.

What I'm listening to:

Fall gets me into a scratchy kind of mood, so I'm leaning into it with some lo-fi Mountain Goats. Songs for Pierre Chuvin is a concept album based on a history of the pagan tribes who fell to the invading Roman Empire. In keeping with the rest of the Mountain Goats' music, its lyrics are deceptively simple, defiant and perceptive. Defiance in the face of oncoming winter is the kind of attitude I'd like to cultivate, so until the season turns, I'll be spinning this record.