Linda Yaccarino Is The Last Funny Twitter Bit Left

September 15, 2023 12:11 PM

...it is one thing to accept a job as the internet's best-compensated rodeo clown and another thing to perform it.
posted by signal (53 comments total)

She is truly owning the glass cliff she's walking on.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:18 PM on September 15, 2023 [8 favorites]

Thanks to the Defector comment section I've learned why Twitter is now unusable since I'm logged out - it shows someone's tweets from most to least viral instead of chronological order.
posted by muddgirl at 12:22 PM on September 15, 2023 [8 favorites]

From now on, I am using this to describe all the top level corp speak coming from leadership: "The tone is that of a parent, deliriously and very obviously high on a hallucinogen, somberly telling a child that she is a cactus."
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:27 PM on September 15, 2023 [36 favorites]

It was inevitable that everyone that consented to stay on Twitter would have to humiliate themselves before Musk; it's the only sort of relationship he can tolerate with the rest of humanity.

This rings so very, very, very true.
posted by aramaic at 12:28 PM on September 15, 2023 [21 favorites]

it shows someone's tweets from most to least viral instead of chronological order.

That's some peak Elongineering there!
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:28 PM on September 15, 2023 [6 favorites]

Can we put Elon in charge of Facebook next?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:30 PM on September 15, 2023 [21 favorites]

Thanks to the Defector comment section I've learned why Twitter is now unusable since I'm logged out - it shows someone's tweets from most to least viral instead of chronological order.

Oh is that what's going on! I wondered why people's tweets were in seemingly random order.
posted by selenized at 12:51 PM on September 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

And it was written that the Internet will move on from the sanctimonious, raging dumpster fire that is ‘X’ and be distracted with a new dumpster in which to lay down and worship, until it too is engulfed in the perilous flames of it’s own demise. For this is the cycle of hyper capitalism tech. Mark my words, fair denizens! The end is nigh!
posted by WorkshopGuyPNW at 1:00 PM on September 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

and be distracted with a new dumpster in which to lay down and worship

Perhaps I'm in the minority, but I didn't use Twitter because I "worship" it. I also never participated in "The Discourse", though I understand that perpetually screaming into that swirling inferno was a major draw for some people. I used it to follow artists that I like, accounts related to my hobbies/interests, and just weird interesting shit that was easy and fun to find.

As Twitter rots from within and collapses I doubt we'll ever have that concentrated collection of art and sharing again. Yes, it was all owned by one corporation in the service of profit so call me whatever names you like over that, but it really is a loss for the world now that it's Balkanizing and creators are scattering to the smaller newer networks or retreating to private Discords.
posted by star gentle uterus at 1:13 PM on September 15, 2023 [40 favorites]

> And it was written that the Internet will move on from the sanctimonious, raging dumpster fire that is ‘X’ and be distracted with a new dumpster in which to lay down and worship, until it too is engulfed in the perilous flames of its own demise.

so here's a thought i've been chewing on for a while, though i dunno if it's useful: the name "platform" is inaccurate. "platform" implies something that you build things on top of, or stand on top of. it's an object. i would like to propose that a better term for this category of thing isn't "platform," but "event." it has a start, it has a middle, it has an end. when we post stuff and read stuff, we're not using a platform, we're participating in some way or another in the event.

the particular event under discussion has been taken over by a rich dude who bought the place to make himself the event's (to use the author of the piece's apt term) main character every day. this is boring and annoying, so everyone's trickling out the door. event over, you don't have to go home but you can't shitpost here.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 2:05 PM on September 15, 2023 [9 favorites]

Yes, I miss old Twitter. I still check it because a few of the people I follow are still posting, but almost everyone has left or just gone silent. I've started migrating over to bluesky and need to really finish that and get off Twitter for good.

But it used to be great! I liked keeping up with the Discourse a bit, although I tended to avoid accounts that really participated a lot. It was fun to see a joke start in one place and circulate among everyone, it was nice to be able to sit in quietly on conversations that really were not for me but that were very informative, it was a great place to discover books and art. Like all social media it could really get to you - I definitely took some time away. But in general I felt that the benefits outweighed the drawbacks, real as those drawbacks were.
posted by Frowner at 2:06 PM on September 15, 2023 [23 favorites]

There is like a 0.2% chance that Linda Yaccarrino has ever even read those tweets, which are clearly written by a committee of about 14 corporate PR flacks and then run through a focus group consisting entirely of people who just finished watching a live taping of something Chuck Lorre produces.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:06 PM on September 15, 2023 [14 favorites]

relatedly/tangentially: "there's a main character and it's the same person every day" might be a good short description of life under fascism.

yes i'm calling stalin and mao fascists 𝕕𝕖𝕒𝕝 𝕨𝕚𝕥𝕙 𝕚𝕥, 𝕥𝕒𝕟𝕜𝕚𝕖𝕤
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 2:07 PM on September 15, 2023 [20 favorites]

star gentle uterus, I felt the same way; I'm finding the dunking on Twitter kind of exhausting because I am mourning the Twitter that was; I loved that place. It was far from perfect, but it was unique and special and I got a lot of personal value out of the public square that it was.

It sucks to be mourning a thing and to have a crowd of people doing a spiteful jig on its corpse as you grieve.
posted by ChrisR at 2:10 PM on September 15, 2023 [25 favorites]

(to use the author of the piece's apt term) main character every day

It's actually a reference to the well-known tweet that succinctly stated "Each day on Twitter there is one main character. The goal is never to be it"
posted by axiom at 2:10 PM on September 15, 2023 [8 favorites]

yes, i know. this is the first time i've seen it used to describe mr. musk's attempt to become permanent main character , though, and it's perfect. especially because it, like, sums up a lot of mr. musk's idiocies: he doesn't even realize that the goal is to not be the main character.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 2:16 PM on September 15, 2023 [8 favorites]

it was nice to be able to sit in quietly on conversations that really were not for me but that were very informative

Yes. I'm already missing that.
posted by praemunire at 2:19 PM on September 15, 2023 [13 favorites]

Somehow that article felt like it was punching down.
posted by slogger at 2:41 PM on September 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

then run through a focus group consisting entirely of people who just finished watching a live taping of something Chuck Lorre produces.

I read that as Lorne Michaels, but yeah, that scans.
posted by slogger at 2:46 PM on September 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

Abehammerb Lincoln: From now on, I am using this to describe all the top level corp speak coming from leadership...

I was quite fond of this one from the article " It mirrors all of his signature, load-bearing defects to such an extent that it feels not so much like something he owns or makes but like him, himself"

"load-bearing defects" is much more evocative and fun to say than "critical flaws".
posted by Popular Ethics at 2:57 PM on September 15, 2023 [7 favorites]

I had a twitter account for 15 years, and I never really got it, though I used to have fun with the x-men related accounts. I locked it down and scrubbed it with bleach when it became clear it was welcoming fascists, homophobes, transphobes, racists, and anti-semites. I was also on FB from the get go, never really saw the appeal, and went on an unfriend safari a decade or so ago and since then have only used it to buy and sell guitar gear. I closed my reddit account last year. I've tried to get on tiktok a few times but can't see any point to it at all and delete my accounts after 1 day or so. I have accounts on tumblr, bluesky, mastodon, instagram, etc., and they're ok, I guess? People post stuff, sometimes people respond. Nothing to get too excited about.
I guess the socials aren't really for me. I think there's some part of my brain that just doesn't know (or have much interest in) how to interact with them. I never felt like I was part of some 'conversation' or discovering cool things, and the kind of interaction they foster with people I actually know seems weak and fake. In general, they seem to range the gamut from boring to toxic, with very few interesting bits in between.
The only things approximating social networks I enjoy are MeFi and Codex, a small SFF writer's forum and its concomitant slack.

(I have all these accounts mostly because as a web dev I have to, and as a writer I might need some sort of social in the future.)
posted by signal at 3:01 PM on September 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

This article is just full of deliciously dense, contemptuous language. This is my nomination for the best part.

They exist in a different context, the one in which the richest and most powerful man in the United States of America is awakening to his own disgusting and anti-human values in real time, post by post, which also happens to be the one that requires Yaccarino to rush up yelling "did someone say sports?!" immediately afterward.

Metafilter: Did Someone Say Sports?!
posted by Nelson at 4:11 PM on September 15, 2023 [25 favorites]

I guess the socials aren't really for me.

Whereas for me, I get addicted to the socials really easily. I like people, I like reading, I like talking, and I like scrolling mindlessly through 30-second bits that degrade my ability to concentrate, and apparently I will spend hours watching cake and cookie decorating videos or those ones where that one guy makes enormous sculptures out of chocolate. I am in many ways the perfect consumer of these sites, and yet, I am down to just Facebook and Mastodon (and an Instagram account I never look at) and I guess Metafilter (though I don't think of it as social media). I know these apps are bad for me so I have decided just not to pick up any more new ones.
posted by joannemerriam at 4:46 PM on September 15, 2023 [9 favorites]

"There are reasons that his sycophants will not and cannot see this. For the inner-circle types, it resolves to the same logic that the bank robber Willie Sutton used when asked he robbed banks: "That's where the money is." For the people using their limited time on earth to post uncompensated arguments on behalf of the Cybertruck, it's a little more opaque, but not too much more."

First rule of Sutton's Law is Willie never said it, which doesn't preclude a law per say but it does make one ponder, if one has robbed so much, why can't one remember a cool retort. Suffice it to say using Sutton in conjunction with The Chancellor of Spaceports is sorta insulting to Sutton but I get it.
posted by clavdivs at 6:32 PM on September 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

which also happens to be the one that requires Yaccarino to rush up yelling "did someone say sports?!" immediately afterward.

At first I thought that was a paraphrase for comic effect.

But... nope. Those were the actual words in the actual tweet.
posted by clawsoon at 7:28 PM on September 15, 2023 [12 favorites]

Social media has taught me two important things:

(1) people will go to great lengths in excusing everything from harassment to genocide, as long as the thing they are supporting conveniences them

and

(2) people will condemn everything from harassment to genocide in the strictest of terms as long as they are not inconvenienced by said condemnation

I don't like the lesson
posted by Pyrogenesis at 12:44 AM on September 16, 2023 [12 favorites]

The Dead Kennedys had it figured out in 1987 Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
posted by Lanark at 12:49 AM on September 16, 2023 [6 favorites]

I heard that 'yaccarino' is how you order a coke in northern Belgium.
posted by ryanrs at 1:19 AM on September 16, 2023

It sucks to be mourning a thing and to have a crowd of people doing a spiteful jig on its corpse as you grieve.

It's like being a friend of Bernie from the infamous weekend.
posted by srboisvert at 3:12 AM on September 16, 2023

it shows someone's tweets from most to least viral instead of chronological order.

Weird. This seems like it completely breaks Twitter as a breaking-news sort of platform that journalists would be interested in.

For example: I went to see what Elon Musk thought about all this in his own words, and it turns out he's thinking about buying Coca-Cola to put the cocaine back in... or at least that's what he was thinking about in April 2022. He was also thinking a lot of other viral things in April 2022. Twitter gives me no indication of what he might be thinking in September 2023.
posted by clawsoon at 5:05 AM on September 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

An event on twitter is when someone posts something viral and a ton of people participate in the thread. Twitter is the venue for the event. You don't build things on top of a venue like you would a platform, you just hold events there.

Is a venue itself also an event? Only if you submit to calling all living creatures thus.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 5:44 AM on September 16, 2023

Twitter is the venue for the event.

Does that mean Twitter's path to financial viability will require figuring out how to set up concession stands and sell $20 hot dogs?
posted by clawsoon at 6:33 AM on September 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

This seems like it completely breaks Twitter as a breaking-news sort of platform that journalists would be interested in.

The stupid timeline ordering only happens if you're not logged in. It's a measure to make it harder to scrape Twitter's website, you have to be logged in to see useful and new data. (Which then makes it easier to track the scraper.)

It's still vandalism to the product. It absolutely breaks the use of Twitter for timeline notifications from companies or emergency services. You have to be logged in for it to work. Imagine "you have to have an account with this advertising surveillance company to see your local emergency office's evacuation notice for the hurricane coming". That's where we are today.
posted by Nelson at 6:33 AM on September 16, 2023 [8 favorites]

The stupid timeline ordering only happens if you're not logged in.

Ah, I see. Really trying to pull up the drawbridge to keep potential new users uninterested, huh?
posted by clawsoon at 6:40 AM on September 16, 2023

I, too, am sad about the demise of Twitter 1.0.
posted by bluesky43 at 6:53 AM on September 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

> The stupid timeline ordering only happens if you're not logged in.

it's kind of a catch-22, right? you have to log in if you don't want the stupid timeline ordering, but logging in is what gave us this stupid timeline in the first place.

heyooooo
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 7:10 AM on September 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

> you have to have an account with this advertising surveillance company to see your local emergency office's evacuation notice for the hurricane

The only reason we're in this situation is because some local emergency offices made the somewhat questionable decision to put out crucial notifications via a privately-owned, advertising-supported, commercial platform that was better suited to this sort of thing.

While I understand that their intentions were probably good, this endgame—or something very much like it—was largely inevitable.

Critical emergency broadcasts should use public infrastructure.
posted by Kadin2048 at 7:28 AM on September 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

There is no public infrastructure that does with Twitter or Facebook does for getting information out. The closest we have are text message alert systems or emergency broadcast notifications on radio and TV. Those tend to be used only for absolute emergencies, a notification a year at most. What we need is something for lower tier information alerts, like "this highway is closed" or "there is a fire 30 miles away and it's probably no big deal but you should be aware of it" or "it's going to be 110°F next week here's a list of cooling shelters."

Twitter and Facebook are great because you could choose to sample various local notifications relevant just to you and get them in a manageable, low impact way. I followed about 6 local agencies and probably got a notification or two a week that managed to be useful and not annoying.

I'm not saying it's good that Twitter, etc captured government notifications. It's manifestly bad, for many reasons including where we are today where that channel no longer works and yet many agencies haven't yet realized it. But it's not like there's some obvious alternative that local emergency offices were just too dumb to use. It's hard to imagine what developing a public notification channel would even be like, although I'd love to read about proposals if there's one that's been thoughtfully researched and presented.
posted by Nelson at 7:57 AM on September 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

I agree that government has been derelict in its duty to stay up to date on providing critical public infrastructure.
posted by I-Write-Essays at 8:00 AM on September 16, 2023 [2 favorites]

"Can we put Elon in charge of Facebook next? a rocket to pluto?" posted by Abehammerb Lincoln

FTFY :P
posted by symbioid at 9:12 AM on September 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

> An event on twitter is when someone posts something viral and a ton of people participate in the thread. Twitter is the venue for the event. You don't build things on top of a venue like you would a platform, you just hold events there.

the venue is the Internet.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:29 AM on September 16, 2023

anyway, it's so exhausting how we gotta think a lot about elon musk all the time. here's hoping for a future where no one thinks about elon musk at all.

like, some time in the future you won't think about elon musk for a whole month. and that time will come sooner than you think. then you won't think about elon musk for a whole year. for a decade. someday you will think about elon musk for the last time — and that day may well be long before you die! you won't know it when you think about elon musk for the last time, sort of like you won't know it when you see an ugly nft ape for the last time, but it'll come, that day will come.

someday, sooner than you think, they'll just be punchlines. some day they'll be forgotten, not even punchlines. and then someday far after that archaeologists of the future will dig up old storage devices from the sites of thousands-year-old data centers and someday they'll learn how to read them and then if the grubby little robber barons of the early 21st century are remembered they'll be remembered as latter-day ea-nasirs.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 9:40 AM on September 16, 2023 [7 favorites]

It's hard to imagine what developing a public notification channel would even be like, although I'd love to read about proposals if there's one that's been thoughtfully researched and presented.

If we're just talking about replicating how these agencies used Twitter, there's nothing stopping governments from setting up their own Mastodon instances (like the BBC did). Notifications would be public and it would be clear from the instance they're on that the accounts are official. They could even crosspost automatically to services like Twitter that don't federate. It doesn't have to be more complicated than that.
posted by Gerald Bostock at 10:34 AM on September 16, 2023 [7 favorites]

I haven’t personally tried this yet but it’s apparently possible to set up a compliant Mastodon account with six static files, taking the difficulty level down into RSS feed levels.
posted by migurski at 12:13 PM on September 16, 2023 [5 favorites]

What we need is something for lower tier information alerts, like "this highway is closed" or "there is a fire 30 miles away and it's probably no big deal but you should be aware of it" or "it's going to be 110°F next week here's a list of cooling shelters."

There used to be the evening news and the morning edition. We killed local news and our best replacement was apparently Twitter. Not that news organizations were, looking at their entire history, any better.
posted by muddgirl at 1:05 PM on September 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

>> lower tier information alerts, like "this highway is closed" or "there is a fire 30 miles away and it's probably no big deal but you should be aware of it"

> There used to be the evening news and the morning edition.

Nah. I follow the local CHP, county sheriffs and weather services between the SF Bay Area & Lake Tahoe to check when heading up in the winter. Watching the morning news in San Jose wouldn't be the same at all and wouldn't help with late-breaking changes that might lead me to stop & stay in a hotel in Placerville (on the way up, below the snow altitude).

I second the call for govt. Mastodon servers. Big states like California & Texas could run their own. The US could provide a server for smaller states & far flung agencies that don't have local support.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 6:51 PM on September 16, 2023 [1 favorite]

There's a hotline: [phone]
posted by muddgirl at 7:27 PM on September 16, 2023

(not to mention the website which I'm sure you are aware of.)

Governments do publish this information off of Twitter. I think that closed-wall social media creates a kind of helplessness in the consumer.
posted by muddgirl at 7:30 PM on September 16, 2023 [3 favorites]

And in the travails of the subject of this thread, Twitter's ostensible CEO just had to kill an ad for the company because it contained a tweet noting the actual company owner's anti-Semitic comments.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:14 PM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

And in the travails of the subject of this thread, Twitter's ostensible CEO just had to kill an ad for the company because it contained a tweet noting the actual company owner's anti-Semitic comments.

DID SOMEONE SAY SPORTS?????

please someone say sports
posted by clawsoon at 3:12 PM on September 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

Sports go sports!
posted by jenfullmoon at 4:31 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

I just logged in to Tweetdeck for the first time in months yesterday to see if "X" was covering the anti-anti-trans demonstrations across Canada yesterday. Turns out Tweetdeck (now "X Pro") is now a pay-only feature! Tweetdeck (with columns I curated over a decade) used to be the only way to get useful information out of the site instead of a narrow stream of bullshit. It feels like I've been pushed out of a wagon onto a manure pile, and then asked for money to get back into the nice seat. No thanks asshole, enjoy your empty wagon.
posted by Popular Ethics at 7:40 PM on September 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

The Moral Case for No Longer Engaging With Elon Musk’s X
posted by Artw at 11:48 AM on October 5, 2023 [1 favorite]