Okay so,

This is probably the fifth draft of this article that I've written so far.

The reason being is that ever since Musk bought Twitter, there is some fresh new hullabaloo going on as he vigorously attempts to burn the company down to the ground in almost every conceivable way.

I was going to make this article about exactly why I quit Twitter but I feel that is irrelevant at this point. Instead, I'm mostly going to focus on why crypto folk are fooling themselves by believing that Musk is going to be the harbinger of the decentralized web.

Because trust me: he sure as hell isn't.

...

Okay okay, so I may as well give a brief explanation as to why I ditched.

I created my Twitter account sometime earlier last year. I was introduced to the wild and wonderful world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies and I wanted to be a part of the revolution. In the midst of the 2021 bull market, the place to mingle with the wider defi community was none other than crypto Twitter (or "CT" if you will). The crypto community was practically born and raised on Twitter and to this day, it remains the central hub for all things blockchain.

Zip forward a few months later and the entire market is having a complete nuclear meltdown thanks to Do Kwon and his buddies (although that wouldn't be the worst of it). As exciting as blockchain tech was back in 2021, that's all it was: excitement. In reality, the tech was still nowhere near where it needed to be. Around this time, Elon Musk, the world's richest manchild and the dude who sent a car into space for the hell of it was having a ridiculous lover's spat with Twitter in a game of "will they, won't they" that felt like it came right out of a cheesy soap opera from the 90’s.

Let me be clear: I didn't leave Twitter because of Musk. I didn't leave Twitter because of the crypto house of cards finally tumbling to the ground. I mostly left it for two reasons: 1) I was never really good at social media and only had about 70 followers tops, and 2) Twitter is not the future of the decentralized web, no matter how much Musk says it will be.

Here's the thing: I honestly don't care who owns Twitter at this point. I don't care if the Buddha himself bought Twitter. The truth is that the platform is a lost cause. Before it went private, the company behind Twitter was in a bad way financially, sorely underperforming compared to its competitors. Twitter's nasty reputation as a toxic cesspit certainly didn't help matters either. I could go into a whole discussion as to why it's so toxic, but that's a whole article in and of itself.

There are many, many different suggestions as to how Twitter can be fixed, but I am highly skeptical that any of them would work. The problem is that Twitter’s flaws are baked into its very design. The platform is difficult enough to moderate as it is due to its massive size. Throw in an algorithm that curates content based solely on engagement (read: how divisive it is) and it’s not hard to see why toxicity has become an issue. To fix Twitter in a way that would be more conducive to both productive and civilized discussion would require a massive overhaul of the platform's structure, something that simply isn't feasible at this point. Even if the platform were to completely rebuild itself from the ground up, it would still have to deal with its terrible reputation as well as up-and-coming competitors like TikTok. It's an uphill battle that Twitter cannot win.

Ultimately, none of this really matters now, because now you have to deal with the biggest obstacle of them all: Elon Musk.

There is something that the crypto community needs to accept about somebody like Musk: He doesn't care about decentralization. The only reason crypto bros adopted him as a figurehead is because of his association with Dogecoin, a satirical shitcoin that Musk loves to pump and dump just so he can screw with all the rubes. To him, crypto and blockchain are only playthings for him to cause more trouble and make more money. Anything positive he says about the technology is lip service at best.

Elon Musk is not some genius innovator or disrupter. He's not a revolutionary technobro who wants to upend the established order. He's a chauvinist and elitist prick of the worse caliber, aka, the sort of people we are trying to take power from in the first place. Musk's takeover of Twitter and the ensuing chaos is a prime example of why we need to decentralize capital and power: people with too much power and too much influence often make terrible decisions that actively harm everybody else. Despite this, I've seen quite a few people in the crypto space not only congratulate Musk on his successful takeover but even support the notion that he will somehow make the platform into some pinnacle of web3 and decentralized finance.

To me, this attitude is absolutely baffling. Just a few months ago, a supposed "effective altruist" who was once treated as the messiah of the industry went and threw everybody under the bus when his company collapsed. That man is now lounging in the Bahamas doing interviews with fawning journalists (at least for now) while we all have to suffer the wrath of regulators. Sam at least tried to hide the fact that he was a conniving weasel. Musk doesn't even bother! How are we falling for this already?!

The crypto community is fooling itself if it thinks Musk is going to usher in the future of web3. I'm not even going to touch on Musk's vague and ridiculous "Everything App" that he wants to turn Twitter into. Whatever he decides to build, it will only be controlled by one person: himself. Anything he says about "decentralization" is simply window dressing.

As for the platform's longevity, I would give it about a few years, and that's being generous. The fact that Musk went and sacked most of his developers is a very bad sign and the bugs and glitches we're seeing on the platform now will only worsen. Unless something massive breaks all of a sudden and renders Twitter unusable forever, its death will likely be very slow and very painful, much like terminal cancer. It's clear to me that Musk is purposefully burning down the old Twitter so he can build something else from its ashes. But whatever he intends with "Twitter 2.0", I'm not buying it.

And neither should you.

(Afternote: Sorry I haven't posted anything on this blog in a while. I recently got a new job last summer which threw my schedule for a loop and it's hard to find the time between work and finishing college. This next semester is gonna be a doozie but I'm going to try and write when I can. Once I finally graduate this summer, I plan to blog on a regular basis.

I was planning for this article to be more in-depth but it's hard to get all my thoughts down on paper and not have it be a friggin novel. As a result, I decided to be a bit more off-the-cuff with this one. May or may not write a follow-up about alternate social medias currently gaining steam. I'll have to think about it.

Also, I now have a Mastodon! If you want to follow up, you can stalk me at https://cryptodon.lol/@BlockMage .)