The Hyper-Online Flywheel
Musk, Twitter, and Breakaway Feedback Loops
I may be in the minority with this opinion, but I find the Twitter of Elon Musk to be far less enjoyable than the old, pre-takeover, bird app. Sure it’s nice that 𝕏 is no longer banning accounts all over the place for wrong-think and operating as a honeypot for the deep-state. At what cost have we achieved this though?
Dorsey’s Twitter was run at such a relaxed, unbusinesslike pace. Changes almost never happened, the company reached a point where it was running on autopilot. They owned TikTok before TikTok existed (Vine) and decided to just discontinue it right before short-form video became the most popular media on earth.
Musk’s 𝕏 on the other hand, seems to be operated with a more ruthless tinkering mindset. 90% of the staff fired. Pale-Blue thrown aside for an All-Black color scheme. An algorithm shifting week-to-week as they A/B test whatever can keep you locked into the platform for longer.
You log-on to a ‘For You’ page now that includes beheadings, cat memes, political screeds, sports highlights, street fights, memes. Whatever stuff hits the monkey brain the hardest and keeps you on the app. Even if you think you don’t like the content you’re probably strangely still coming back to the drip. Whether out of habit, or an unconscious desire to keep seeing it. While Twitter felt like interacting with a closer knit group of followers, 𝕏 is a trip to the chaotic world of the hyper-online.
Twitter/𝕏 is not alone in operating in this fashion. If anything they’re late to the party in optimizing for “time on site” and user retention. The “Hyper-Online Flywheel” goes something like this.
Hyper-online users (more detached from reality) post incendiary content —> Fellow internet addicts are first to comment/react to posts (thus dictating the content that gets traction and promoted) —> Casual Users / e-Tourists log on and find a feed that radicalizes them to being hyper-online. —> cycle repeat ad infinitum.
As someone who logs on everyday and willingly participates in the collective digital brain-rot, I’m not going to moralize about the cycle. It is what it is. The Boomers had television, Millenials/Gen-Z have social media, I imagine kids someday will have their own “insane” platform where entertainment meets mind-control.
I’ve often thought about a future where the web is actually more humane then real life. Where if you’re standing on a subway platform waiting for a train, you’re more of a human by plugging in to the total consciousness of humanity on your smartphone than just standing there gazing off into the distance.
Sounds dystopian? That’s only because we’re in the messy middle where all the social media platforms are e-cesspools in their own unique ways. We have the portal in our hand, but instead of Digital Valhalla, it takes you to a drip of Digital Crack Hits.
One day though, I think we’ll see the physical/digital chasm crossed to something beyond our current comprehension.
I think part of the reason we’re in the messy middle, especially on Twitter, is because a better social media is detached from ad revenue. The only reason engagement matters is to then sell a product at some point in the chain. Substack seems to be moving in that direction and I think Elon would like that too.