The Public Utility of The Hellsite

“If there’s anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now” – Zaphod Beeblebrox, ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy’

Let’s get the admission out of the way: this tweet sums me up. At least me. Definitely the small press community. Probably more people than are willing to admit:

Let’s get one thing out of the way: Twitter, like literature, doesn’t have to do anything. All Twitter did was take Facebook, strip it of everything except status updates, and put a character cap on status updates to weed out the spittle-flecked Dale Gribbles of the world. But much like how literature can be SO MUCH MORE than John Updike’s musings on infidelity or Lorrie Moore being bored at university cocktail parties (yes, I said it: Birds of America is boring. Search your feelings, Gen X, you know it to be true), Twitter can be so much more than Bean Dad. Maybe not better than eating beans during Cars 2, but better than Bean Dad.

So what about the good things of Twitter? Not to immediately bring out the dramatic example, but:

Or as the brilliant Jenée Desmond-Harris put it:

Newsrooms take police word as Gospel. And police are fucking liars. None of the progress that’s been made exposing cops as the pathetic, lying, wife-beating petulant bullies that they are happens without Twitter.

Twitter has also been good for Palestinian activists:

Let’s not forget how good Twitter has been for the labor movement, even if conspiracy theories aren’t necessarily the answer for Elon’s dipshittery:

Side note: It is tremendously pathetic that Elon, in his heart of hearts, just wants to be a poster. There’s honor in being a certain kind of poster, but it is a tainted, antiheroic honor. Being a poster should not be something you work on, and yet, when you have $44 billion to burn:

Anyway, there’s no going back to a world without social media. People have made too many connections with people that aren’t their neighbors. But there has to be a better way than Facebook, Twitter, and anywhere else dreamed up by some Ayn Rand-reading, Epstein-flight log-appearing computer dork who thinks that being able to code means you deserve to poison humanity with wanton breeding.

Make The Internet (And Social Media) A Public Utility

The hellsite is real life. No, I’m not saying hell is other people. I am saying other people frequently suck, and are best avoided. But no matter your social media poison: the Boomer email forwards of Facebook, the mansplaining of Reddit, the body image-warping of Instagram, the deviants on Tumblr, the gleefully surrender of free will that is TikTok, and the sludgepit of Twitter—that’s real life. Those people exist. So do all the cool people you meet. Sometimes the price of hanging with cool people is the occasional asshole walks by. It’s easy to weather the storm of an asshole when you and all your friends are in solidarity together. Social media, for better or worse, helps you make friends.

Remember flyers? I was in bands throughout middle and high school, and any time we had a show, we passed out flyers. Post them on bulletin boards at school, venues, coffee shops, libraries, whatever. Social media’s expanded the place of the bulletin board/bathroom wall. Anywhere NOFX scrawled “I pledge a grievance to the United States of America and to the Republicans for whom I can’t stand…” they were never actually at risk of Ronald Reagan reading it, if Reagan could even read. Now we can watch the white guy from In Living Color taunt Mussolini’s granddaughter about her ancestor getting strung up by his ankles in the street, all from the comfort of our own phones. Life is better than it was 20 years ago.

But What About The Nazis?

Content moderation. No one wants to do it, no one likes it, it’s hard to define, but you just have to. Sorry. “Free speech absolutism” is always going to attract the worst dregs of humanity, and there just needs to be people moderating. I’m not really interested in hashing out free speech debates here, I just know the moderators need to be paid $100k a year, be given full benefits (actual benefits, like they have in Europe. Not “three minutes of recovery time after giving birth,” like in the US), and a pension. And of course, we all do our part with block/reporting.

We Need To Be Loud About The World We Want To Build, Twitter Helps That

Remember when Trump got elected President? I try not to. We all lost our minds, more than a little bit. I know I was fist-shaking and cursing at every other effort to gut the ACA, every ICE atrocity (remember #AbolishICE? We should still do that), that Michael Scott wannabe with the Reeses’ mug who killed net neutrality, having my day ruined by that time Trump tweeted about calling Taiwan and I thought it meant (somehow?) nuclear war. Like I said, lost my mind.

Sometime around the early-mid stages of the pandemic, I got real low. The futility of everything swirled around me like toilet water that wouldn’t flush. I can’t explain what clicked, but I slowly realized that not everyone’s Twitter feed was rolling around in the muck of a broken world. Some people are activists, some people are artists, some people are birdwatchers, some people post cool architecture photos, some people are historians, and some people are just goddamn funny.

The great thing about Twitter is you can amplify what you want to put out in the world. This is not to be high-minded and Romantic about Twitter’s power to save the world, only an idiot would believe in that. But you can put what you want into the world. You can read lit mags. You can watch Ja Morant highlights. You can fully embrace the move to turn the billionaire governor who is shockingly great at his job into the Great Khan J.B. “Big Pritz” Pritzer, a socialist punishment from God who wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t sinned.

You can also avoid politics. Coming face-to-face with coconut crabs is always fun.

Ultimately, sure, I’m getting a little “Twitter-as-town-square”-y here. I recognize I’m saying “hey, Twitter brings me into contact with people I wouldn’t otherwise hear from” while also being a straight cis white man who doesn’t get the death threats other people do. But idk dude, we inadvertently made a place where we could find Our People. We could learn that we’re not alone in loving poetry and hating cops. We can support each other’s art and share recipes, while also mercilessly dancing on Queen Elizabeth’s grave. We can post about mutual aid groups, Shea Serrano can activate the FOH Army.

And it’s a bummer that that space can be so easily ripped away at the whims of the worst poster of all time just because he’s a billionaire. Nationalize Twitter, make the CEO a government-appointed job with an age limit of 50, pay the moderators like the second sons of nobility. Do the same with Facebook.

Sorry you got an email,

Chris