Amidst all that girl and -core and deprecating, there are more eyes, everywhere, than ever before. Egregious wealth is unattainable to the everyday man, but public perception has inflated the means and expectations of social currency. People tracking down the familial records of anyone that doesn’t “sit right with them” is not an instinct developed without access to the internet. Social media has connected us all. Why worry about government surveillance when someone across the sea can sic their entire follower list to dox your precise location? Our brains aren’t meant to grapple with that scale of being perceived. With the lines between privacy and (parasocial) relationships obscured, the art of trust is coveted as authenticity.
A Dior intern disclosed the origins of her luxurious life, denouncing a name that funded the invasion of Poland, Nazi ties, and blood money. Drew Barrymore, from media darling to subject of ridicule, seemed genuinely surprised by the unanimous public dissent over her WGA-covered, struck show running four months into the entertainment industry writers’ strike. As Mina Le has observed: hot girls are walking, girls are blogging, dinner is girl, forty-year-old men are baby girls. We are in a girl economy.
We’re wired to interact with everything—to exchange breadcrumbs of ourselves and set fires to the social communities we touch and leave behind. To make ourselves relatable and maintain an air of mystery. Nuance dies once conversation leaves its intended audience, outside the reach of the original poster’s inner circle. It now takes shape as discourse. As this is the problem and you are the problem and my own moral judgment should, and will, overpower your own. That, or you exist in a chamber that echoes where every opinion and perspective is one that mirrors your own.
I study, work, and live within the realms of social media. Already, digital textbooks have updated their texts to refer to Twitter as X. Its rebrand leaves a bad taste in my mouth from a marketing standpoint, but also from the wave of loathing that rolls over because Elon Musk has to subject everyone to his sick fascination with the letter. Never mind the fact that before the unfortunate turn of events that led to its rebranding, Twitter was a child—just seventeen years old. Unironically part of a genre of youth that legislators promise to protect yet always, somehow, inevitably fail to do.
Users needed a particular sense of humor or involvement in a specific niche to appreciate the culture of saying “Twitter, do your thing” to expose the untrustworthy and aid people we only know by profile picture. It has always been a rabid, morbid mining ground for misinterpretation, but it also had a certain wit that allowed the platform to stand on its own. So yes, I’ve lost Twitter and it feels like an intimate loss. The same mutuals that claimed they would never abandon ship, not until someone pries the platform out of their dead hands, are now sharing links to where else you can find them. Links to the photo app or that video one—or a screenshot of a long-ass username belonging to an emerging platform deciphered by a cloud and blue circle emoji.
How does one truly survive the death of a platform? Tumblr allegedly died, but ignored fandoms are still up and kicking, peacefully. Social media can’t be our everything. There’s no more solace in habitual doom scrolls on a timeline that’s slowly losing its charm and ability to make me chuckle. I could indulge in renditions of touching grass: adopting third places. Not work, not home, just a secret third thing. But like Twitter, it feels as though I’m losing those too. The public library is closing until further notice. I can count on one hand how many coffee shops have good matcha (two). Shops close at the ripe time of 7 p.m. It’s starting to feel like nobody wants the youth to be anywhere. To rot with the knowledge that we see everything and nothing. I read books at the beach and do homework at the park and plan to take up pottery sometime, someday. Twitter isn’t the same, and I mourn. And at the center of it all, Elon is at fault, as per usual.
Words by Bri Shufford.
Graphic by Reem Hinedi.