this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.

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[–] [email protected] 100 points 2 months ago

Don't call it anything. Ignore it and maybe it will go away.

[–] Furball 81 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I mean, it’s not like twitter was ever a beacon of glory, pre-Elon twitter was still twitter

[–] anonymouse2 35 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Twitter was a turd. X is a turd marinaded in diarrhea sauce.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

Such poetry. It brings a tear to my eye

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

Ok well maybe a beacon of glory is a bit out there for Twitter, but there was a time where it was actually cool and unique.

Like back in the day where you could interact with it over plain SMS lol

I feel old.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

My poor parents phone bill when I started using Twitter over SMS...

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[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 51 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Xitter (pronounced shitter)

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Ummm … how?!? I just copied that text and it worked. 🤯

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Because it's text.

There are more kind of letters then just our latin alphabet. Cyrillic, aboriginal Canadian and even Chinese and Japanese can be typed by just text for instance (日本語の例え)

In the same vein, mathematical and other scientific symbols can be typed using just text, and 𝕏 is the symbol that stands in place for arbitrary distance in a formula.

Basically, it's just a (mathematical) letter, it can be typed.
That's also why their new CEO had difficulties copyrighting it; it's just a letter, after all!

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (3 children)

As a sidenote, looking up what the mathematical symbol actually means gave me this gem

𝕏 redirects here, for the social media, see Twitter

Even the Wikipedia community refuses to acknowledge this!

[–] gravitas_deficiency 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It’s a distinct ascii character

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Sorry twitter was always trash

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

It really is saying something that it's waaay worse now.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago

There is simple solution: just ignore it. Don't refer to it in any way.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago (4 children)

It's not like it was a hostile take over. They played their part when Musk talked shit and they sued him to follow through with the purchase. They could have easily kept it, but they wanted the money instead.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Not that they are blameless - far from it - but they had a fiduciary responsibility to pursue the deal because it was good for their shareholders

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (6 children)

"Fiduciary duty to get profit" is a libertarian myth. It has no legal basis.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

It’s a myth so widely pushed and accepted over the decades that just calling it a myth won’t be accepted as an argument against it at this point.

What I think is interesting is that this sense of fiduciary duty can be used by a company to do whatever they want. Mass layoffs are part of a fiduciary duty to cut costs. Mass hirings are part of a fiduciary duty to expand operations for growth. At this point it’s less a myth and more an excuse for doing whatever.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

Twitter has never, even dating back to it's inception, never ever ever turned a profit. The whole reason Elon mockingly offered to buy it was because they were looking for, and struggling to find, a buyer. They just wanted to break even and walk away.

Instead Elon was like "Hur dur I got 43 billion for ya!" And Twitter was like "SOLD! No takesies backsies!". And Elon was like "Wait, wut?"

And then Elon carried a sink through the lobby in protest.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It was a public company, the shareholders would've sued them, no?

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

OP might be talking about the user base, not the owners.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Hey, don't rewrite history - twitter was always notoriously bad, under Elon it surely got even worse though.

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[–] gravitas_deficiency 21 points 2 months ago (5 children)

For me, it’s simpler than that: I’m gonna deadname his company as long as he keeps deadnaming his daughter

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

People now have fond memories of twitter? Insane.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But Twitter has always been shit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not really. It was fun to talk to people that you barely knew. It was kinda like a hybrid of a chatroom and a forum.

But it grew to become shit.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

They have $44 billion dollar bills to wipe away the tears.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't understand why anyone would care this much about a social media website

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

Those people sold it to musk. They were tech bros whose goal from the start was to get a massive buyout and bail. They don't deserve your respect anymore than musk does.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Previously, it was a shithole.
Now, it's a Nazi shithole.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

The way I look at it, if Elon Musk is gonna deadname his own child, I'm sure as shit gonna deadname the corporation he tanked

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

The following is a tremendously disproportionate analogy given that we're talking about a microblogging website, but I really don't think there's any better term for it:

It's really less like you're calling Twitter by its deadname and more like you're refusing to call it by its slave name. Twitter didn't come up with this on its own, some guy just rolled up and said "I'm changing your name because yours isn't cool enough." Like, fukken Kunta Kinte.

Again, very unfortunate that that's the only comparison that comes to mind but I'm really blanking on anything else. Jean Valjean, I guess. Maybe Darth Vader. Locutus of Borg.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I mean, what you personally call it isn't really going to make any difference, so if we're trying to optimize your mental health, just reframe the naritive in your head. You're still calling it Twitter to honor what it used to be, back when you respected it. You are refusing to acknowledge the nazi dumpster fire it has become, even if you still need to talk about it.

I personally basically never have a reason to mention the site when taking to another person, but if/when I do, I'll call it Twitter just because I think it would annoy Elon, if he somehow knew.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

"X" in Chinese is pronounced "sh", so I approve.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

We should call it "X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter." Every time. Yes it sounds ridiculous, because it is.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 months ago

Twitter is gone. It died the day Elon fired most of its staff.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I have despised twitter since basically its inception.

  1. The character (original) character limit fundamentally means you are strongly encouraged to limit conversation to basically soundbites, slogans, and pithy comments. Even though this was changed later, it still created a culture that generally mocks anything long winded.

While its true that brevity is the soul of wit, wit is not the same thing as a detailed and nuanced discussion of a complex topic.

It thus lends itself to being an optimal tool for political slogans, celebrity gossip, and direct corporate advertisement.

  1. Twitter is far, far, faaar too open ended, as in one to many kind of network connections. Its a dream come true also for narcissistic, attention seeking individuals who want to win Twitter.

  2. Twitter blew up before Facebook completely shifted (enshittified?) their entire model from being focused on actually connecting friend groups, and directly pushed Facebook toward just being an unmitigated firehose of 'content' from every which way, which just became the norm for 'social media' design.

Of course X now is even fucking worse, but I am so glad its dying.

The way I see it, Twitter contributed heavily toward destroying the older, more personal formats of social media, it helped destroy the old forum culture of the net where people had communities and a measure of intellect, privacy and respect.

It took the sincerity out of online discourse, and was foundational in shifting the internet from a 'place' with lots of weird locales, into some kind of Eldritch god's sick joke of a species level omni-mirror, reducing online humanity to a popularity contest of political slogans, narcissistic clout chasers, gossip mongers, and corporate sloganeering and brand worship... and giving all of this to us in an undifferentiated constant flow.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I mean lets not overdo it the algorithms were becoming very trash before it was bought up but it was usable. Peak twitter was like 2017

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

Twitter was no better than x lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

I hadn't been there in a long while, but a friend sent a link to what he said was a funny tweet. It was, but the responses were just awful, and they all had blue checkmarks.

Every single inserted ad was for right-wing grifts (crypto, t-shirts, gold coins, etc) or awful right-wing politicians looking angry or posing with guns.

Noped right out.

I pointed it out to my wife, but she says the journalists she follows are still all there. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

I like xitter… which someone told me was pronounced “shitter”. Seems right.

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