The Muskening, Part II

Wrapping up the Twitter analysis

A lot has happened in the two weeks since I wrote the first part of this article, The Muskening. Things have moved much faster than I anticipated, and matters I expected would become clear over months became clear within weeks. My own decisions, which I’ll share, have been rendered much easier as a result, and I’ve been able to make them sooner. This has surprised some people, but I tend not to stick around once I can read the writing on a wall, and decide I don’t like the message. Life is too short to fight joyless rearguard battles on aging frontiers when there are exciting pioneer adventures to be had on emerging ones.

A brief summary of where we left off. Two weeks ago, I concluded that the encounter between Twitter and Musk was like an immovable object meeting an irresistible force; an undefeated emperor meeting a fabled graveyard of empires. The result was both sides getting into each other’s OODA loops and knocking each other out simultaneously, leading to a series of own-goals on both sides.

We mostly covered the Musk-side drama last time, so I’ll do an update on the state of play there, before turning our attention to the other side of the drama: the responses (which I assessed to be 95% ineffective last time), on the user side. I’ll share my assessment of what I think is going on there, why I think it is ineffective, what I’m doing instead, and what I think at least some of you should do as well.

We’ll wrap up this 2-parter with a brief look at the broader questions, which go beyond Twitter, and even beyond the Silicon Valley vibe shift, precipitated by the Muskening. As an isolated battle over one social media platform, the Muskening is important, but not that important.

But as an early sign of more momentous shifts, it is much more important, and it’s that level of significance I want to get to.