Autumn journal

This week: what if the problem isn’t Twitter, but humans? Also, some notes on Falmouth; and the Mid Cornwall Metro.

People who’ve quit Twitter these last few years occasionally acquire the same air as those who’ve found god, or veganism, or a life not punctuated by cigarette breaks. They want to evangelise and also to very slightly judge those who are still making the same, foolish choices that they themselves were prone to literally 20 seconds earlier. This is, as any atheist who’s ever looked forward to a large slab of undercooked cow will know, intensely irritating. 

The reasons I am still on Twitter are not a million miles away from my reasons for continuing to eat meat. Sure, it’s bad for me; sure it’s objectively screwing up the world. But despite the fact it’s a choice which I’d struggle to justify by the principles that I tell myself I have, it’s generated work, and given me a lot of pleasure, and who among us can stay pure under capitalism?

For the first time, though, I am seriously contemplating a future without the bird app in it. The site has so far survived the Musk takeover, and the dysfunctionality and terrible politics that have gone with it; one of its selling points, the reverse chronological timeline, may be dead, but the other, the fact everyone else was there, has thus far remained. Now, though, people seem to be, if not leaving, then certainly talking about leaving a whole lot more. Musk’s latest proposal, to charge users money just to be there, might push enough of them away that even those who would consider paying for it no longer see the point. None of the alternative platforms have yet achieved critical mass (although I am enjoying BlueSky). If that goes through, they might not have to. 

The predictable reaction to the week’s big story – the allegations against Russell Brand, revealed in a joint investigation between Times, Sunday Times and Channel 4’s Dispatches – may count as another nail in the coffin. There were the unfounded rumours – some likely true, some plausibly not, all the sort of thing that no one should be writing down without speaking with a lawyer – as to which other male comics were to feature in the documentary, or otherwise be next in the firing line. There was the fact that, despite untold numbers of tweets on a single subject, Brand’s name was missing from the trending topics, leading to upsettingly persuasive conspiracy theories that someone was messing with the data. 

But worst of all was the widespread prevalence of a phenomenon I’ve come to think of as “Twitter poisoning”: the urge to hammer every story, no matter what it is, into a shape that allows us to maintain the existing battle lines. This explains why some saw this story primarily as an opportunity to attack someone – the BBC; Owen Jones – that they’d probably have found a reason to attack anyway. It explains the way that many of the most annoying or unpleasant people on the internet – Andrew Tate, Julia Hartley-Brewer, a large chunk (but, entertainingly, not all) of the GB News presenting team and yes, Musk himself – instinctively rallied to Brand’s defence. It even explains why some gender critical accounts, who claim their concerns about trans rights stem from their fears for women’s safety, bizarrely seemed to be taking Brand’s side. Because those they’ve come to see as the enemy were on the other. 

The way some automatically treat a genuinely horrific news story as an opportunity for self-promotion or numbers; the way the urge towards tribalism turns out to be stronger than commitment to whatever ideas led us to join that tribe in the first place – these things too, could easily be counted as proof of how Twitter is ruining us all. But after some thought, I’m not so sure. Misinformation, self-promotion, tribalism that verges on the pathological: Twitter may shape these things, but it didn’t invent them. All of them seem to me to spring primarily from just gathering large groups of people in a single place. 

Eventually, probably, something will emerge as the new Twitter. Maybe it’ll have a reverse chronological timeline and better moderation and trending topics that haven’t been fiddled to meet the expectations of any right-wing baby men. But I suspect it’ll still be a place where people make fools of themselves, defending the indefensible because their mates are, too. Perhaps I shouldn’t have called it “Twitter poisoning” after all.

Notes on Cornwall (generally) and Falmouth (specifically)

I was away last week, as you’ll have realised from my temporary regeneration into an award-winning TV satirist.¹ I spent a couple of days in Falmouth, which is home to the world’s third deepest natural harbour and also my co-author Tom Phillips, both of which are lovely.

Anyway, in my time getting to Cornwall and wandering around Falmouth and sitting in a delightful selection of pubs and restaurants with Tom, I found myself thinking a lot of thoughts about the economy, history and culture of the place. And what’s the point of having a substack called The Newsletter of (Not Quite) Everything if I’m not going to inflict them on you? So: