Weekly Briefing from the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, 11/18/22

Twitter Ate My Baby Edition

As yet another misunderstood holiday tradition looms before us, prompting overly sentimental platitudes from your well-meaning relatives and a searing admonishment from strangers you follow on social media, we here at the Apocalypse Bunker would like to remind you that it’s the carbs, not the tryptophan, that make you sleepy. Eat less bread, America.

Twitter: “I’m Not Quite Dead”

I’ve read maybe a half dozen “think pieces” about the impending death of Twitter, like, oh, any second now...wait for it...wait for it... and still it putters on. I saw my fellow creatives flipping various kinds of out about it. Anger, sadness, disgust, resignation, and a few sighs of relief, because, you know, Twitter is largely considered to be a train wreck of the traveling circus variety, where it’s bad enough that the train is off the track in pieces, but over there is a clown on fire, and the giraffes are loose, and a random elephant fell out of the boxcar onto a Honda Civic and crushed a toddler and you just can’t look away at any of it, even as you’re thinking to yourself, “this is the best circus ever.”

I hate Twitter. I’ve endured it, mostly because I felt that I had to, as a writer, and it’s been strongly suggested that in order to be published and be successful, your “platform” had to include Twitter and have a minimum of five thousand followers. Lovely. This has always been my problem with Twitter; I don’t take it seriously as a means of communication. If you’re good at writing bumper stickers, then Twitter is your jam. It was made for comedians, especially the ones who spend all day writing funny stuff.

I ain’t that kind of writer. I use complete sentences. I use grammar and punctuation. I use all eight parts of speech. I like paragraphs. I work best developing a thought, and then building on that thought. As a result, most of my tweets are project announcements and publishing updates.

That’s not to say I didn’t try. Sometimes I’ll tweet back at someone. But for years, as in, the last seven or eight, every time I open up Twitter, I feel like I’m being yelled at, lectured to, or talked down to by people half my age. Snotty condescension and arch, sarcastic rebukes would rain down on my from Gaming Twitter or Comedy Twitter or just Twitter Twitter, thanks to their algorithm looking at the people I follow and shoving strangers at me. Trending tweets, things my friends re-tweeted, that’s a 19-tweet rant about how Racism Is Not Okay, Y’all. Really, Dylan? It’s not? Well, hell, pal, you really turned me around on this, especially with that observation that the 1980s were a bad time for people of color. No shit, you little jerk. I was there. And even as I’m yelling at the screen, I can see this is someone I don’t even follow, or have ever even heard of, but yanno, he’s got like 25K followers or something. How the hell did Dylan end up on my screen, lecturing me indignantly about The Pop Culture Thing He Just Discovered?

The algorithm. That’s how.

So, they say Elon Musk is bad for Twitter. Okay. I don’t know how that could be, since I think Twitter sucks green donkeys to begin with. But we’ll see. I’ve been logging in daily, waiting for something, I don’t know what. Let me tell you what I have found, though:

Suddenly, I’m seeing more tweets from people I’m actually following. And their tweets aren’t chittering little screeds or lectures about how colonialism is bad or everything is a microaggression and if you disagree then unfriend me now. They’re all talking about stuff I am suddenly more interested in. And I’m not getting bombarded with smugness from strangers.

If this is the heat-death of the Twitter Universe, then pass me the sunscreen. Seems like everyone who rage-quit when Elon showed up? Maybe they are great people and maybe they aren’t. But what I do know is that the signal to noise ratio is better than it’s been in years. For me, at least. If you liked the screeds and the yelling, then maybe you need to figure out where the scolds ended up. I’m sure we’ll hear from them soon enough.

A Winter Wonderland

It’s a brisk 37 degrees here in North Texas, and it’s not even December. If the usual percentages apply, it’ll be somewhere around -20 degrees by Christmas Eve. Ah, the Winter Hellscape Returns! And hey, considering that there has been no progress on the power grid, thanks to Your Political Heroes and the conglomerates and oligarchs that ran the superpacs that funded their campaigns, it’s a safe bet we’ll be dipping into our emergency rations at the Apocalypse Bunker, at least until Ted Cruz returns from Trinidad and Tobago, or wherever his daughters want to flee to this year.

You can tell it’s Thanksgiving Season because I’m dressed like a gourd in orange, green, and brown. Ignore the scruff.

Thanksgiving

The next time we see each other, your eyes will have that milky sheen that only comes from carbohydrate poisoning, and your body will be weirdly hot, thanks to the meat sweats, and some of you may even be standing in a line, hoping to murder someone on your way to the flatscreen TV that Wal-Mart is selling for 90% off. In that flushed heat of excitement, or that torpor that happens when you go facedown into an entire pumpkin pie, remember this: I am inordinately grateful to you all, every single one of you, for your continued existence in my life.

For those of you not feelin’ it this year, may I suggest…?

I know I’ve said this before, but I would not have made it through the last five years without your input. It doesn’t seem that long, does it? Or, optionally, it sure seems longer, you know? Every time I get a card in the mail, every time I get a text, or an email, I think about how fortunate I am. Thanks for being a brother, a sister, a friend, or a fan of mine. I mean it when I say I love you all (not in the same way, you understand) and hope that the holiday season treats you well and you can find some peace as we head into the final lap of 2022.