I didn't find any good links on X, but today's reflections on what I found on the Internet are about X.
Funny thing about X. I do read more than I write, listen more than I talk, in real life and in cyberspace. Yet, when X suddenly (no warning, no mention of this in the official rules) springs on us a new policy that people have to pay for the number of posts we want to publish per day...
1. There's no way I'm paying X. I don't object to Elon Musk earning his own money but Hell will freeze solid a thousand times before I send him any more money.
(And I don't mean freeze over. I mean freeze solid. Picture the whole population of even southern Michigan being airlifted away from what Al Gore says is the once again impending ice age.)
2. I "unfollowed" all the commercial accounts long ago. This morning I went to the trouble of "unfollowing" all the accounts that don't give evidence of reading MY X posts. Never mind that several of them were writers' and musicians' accounts that I never expected would use X socially, from which I only ever expected to see news about scheduled books, records, or concerts. Never mind that a few were sports accounts I followed mainly to have posts to share with people who don't post on social media, but do check sports teams' accounts. (I joined Twitter at the urging of a relative who's had an empty profile page for years: "If you post something about the -- team, I'll see it and know you need a lift.") Never mind that a discouraging number of old Tweeps have not merely become Twitter Quitters, but actually died, in the years since I followed them on Twitter. I want to be sure that I don't "follow" anyone who thinks he's paying to set up a cyberspace where he does all the talking and never listens to me. Even if I never expected the person managing the account to engage socially with anyone else, from now on, if you're not reading and replying to my X posts, I don't want to see yours.
3. And I even noticed, when a long-term e-friend did reply to one of my posts, that she's only ever replied to my posts that replied to hers. Why do so many of her posts show up, anyway? Get outta my feed, you wretched paid account. Who wants to read what someone is paying to say? This person had posted some harmless disinformation under the line, "Nobody is really reading these posts." I said that I was, but I was stepping further back from X again. She replied, "I'm sorry you feel unheard." Hello? Who posted about "feeling unheard" first, and no, "feeling unheard" is not the feminine form of "seeing low engagement numbers" or "getting ignorant replies." "I'm sorry you feel..." is a sexist insult to a woman, even if another woman spews it. I don't follow this person any more.
The world became a less friendly place today...
Obviously Musk deserves blame for this. He can afford to run X as a charity, and he should do that. He should buy lists of the names of all the writers who were cheated by Associated Content, Bubblews, Chatabout, Hire Writers, Freelancer, and all the other writing sites that owe people money, and/or Yougov, worldwide; and he should offer those people a dollar a post, including reposts and quoteposts, up to 100 posts a day, for life. Rules should specifically include that we will be frank about corporations and their products, but only in an informative way, no "flames." ("Chatabout has owed me $4.85 since 2014" is informative. "Chatabout stinks" is a flame.) And they should stipulate that he's doing this JUST SO THE POOR SLOBS WHO THINK THEY HAVE TO PAY PEOPLE TO READ THEIR CONTENT, WHICH IF ALL THEY EVER POST ABOUT IS JUNK THEY ARE TRYING TO SELL IS PROBABLY TRUE, WILL HAVE AN AUDIENCE.
Meanwhile? Substack also has tiers of free and paid memberships, but it uses them in a reasonable way. Free accounts are encouraged to use the "chat" pages and e-mail their Substack'zines to everyone who wants to read them, free of charge. If your'zine takes off and people pay for subscriptions, then Substack starts talking about revenue sharing. You can pay for actual publication. The ephemeral nature of Twitter and X wouldn't support that...though X has tried to develop a "writers" division where in theory X might someday be able to publish long posts in the way Substack does.
All Xeeps, and all old Tweeps who migrated to Blue Sky, are hereby invited to join me on Substack until X recovers sanity or dies.
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