Goodbye, CounterSocial
When Elon Musk bought Twitter, some of us scrambled
Including me.
Wealthy contrarian Elon Musk, South African heir to an apartheid-era fortune, had been toying with buying the social media platform, Twitter, and then he up and did it, for $44 billion. When the announcement was made, some Twitter users went rushing to other social media platforms — of which there are few.
I set up an account at CounterSocial, which has a decent reputation for limiting its troll population. The home page of the platform looks like my old Hootsuite account, which was a little daunting. This is the end of my semester, so I don’t have loads of time to explore a new social media account, but that’s not what led me to delete the account yesterday morning.
I killed any chance of building a CS account for reasons that were partly personal, and partly political.
Personal: I have left a marriage, a church, and a political party. Rather recently, I nearly left a job. For all my thinking of myself as a stand-and-deliver kind of person, I sure do leave a lot of things. I like to tell myself that I try to stick things out, but I am skilled, as well, at pulling a geographic. I don’t regret any of it but what does that say about my ability to, say, compromise?
Political: If we all segregate ourselves on TruthSocial or pick-a-platform with like-minded people, where’s the fun? Or, more to the point, where is the opportunity for dialogue (and yes, I acknowledge that as I write that, I am having a hard time remember the last good conversation I had on Twitter, but stay with me here.) If I’m off shouting into my own echo chamber, who is being served? How much do I need a “Right again, Susan?” to keep me engaged?
I have a Facebook account, and a Twitter account. I run a Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram account for my local library (I’m on the board).
I don’t do TikTok. I believe I already have plenty of involvement with social media, so for now, I’m sitting tight. And besides: I like arguing.
Back in the day (I love saying that)1960-61, my mother gathered us kids together. Not an unusual thing, but this time her serious face gave weight to what she was about to tell us.
“There is a political system in South Africa that is called apartheid. It denigrates and dehumanizes the black Africans who have lived there for thousands and thousands of years, long before it was invaded by Europeans. One of the methods they use, is to require all black Africans to carry passbooks in order to travel anywhere in the country. Those passbooks have a picture of the person in the book. That picture is taken with a Polaroid camera which gives an instant picture. Polaroid is an American co. From this point forward, no one in this family will buy one of their cameras nor will one on those cameras enter our home nor will you allow anyone to take a picture of you with one of those cameras. Do you understand me?”
We all somberly agreed, even my father who was not used to taking orders from his wife.
My mom knew our little effort would not change the vulgar system in a land 10,000 miles away, nor affect the bottom line of that billion dollar company, but she knew it was time for her family to act and maybe that might change who we were and how we were who we were. I know that tiny act in a small family, decades ago changed me.
I am my mother’s son. Twitter is deleted. Thanks mom.
I have a Twitter account mainly for the purpose of letting people out there know about my books. To me, tweets are just about nudging people to think about something, not as a way to have a real conversation. Guess I'm old fashioned. A couple of years ago I left Facebook for various reasons, mainly: Cambridge Analytica took my account info. Ticked me off. Sigh. I'll probably stay on Twitter, but if hateful speech gets the upper hand even more than it has now, I'm out. Book lovers can find me on Goodreads.