Musk Rat, Part Two

 Elon Musk is a turd.

And I'm glad I quit X.

Musk decided to involve himself in a tête-à-tête between a Jewish X user and an X account owner operating under the name "The Artist Formerly Known as Eric," whom I'll call Eric from now on, in which the Jewish user demanded that Eric tell him to stop saying Hitler was right to his face just what he thinks of Jews.  Eric came right out and said to his face (well, as far as you can tell something to anyone's face on social media) that Jews are responsible for bringing in racial and ethnic populations from the Third World to de-Europeanize America.  (The joke's on Eric; thanks to are pathetic public transportation, our decrepit public schools, our lax gun laws, and our commercialization of the arts, we're already de-Europeanized!) Eric also thought it was comical that the brown people allegedly brought in to replace whites would turn on the Jews after arriving here, although there's no evidence that recent immigrants harbor any anti-Semitism.  Musk then butted in, telling Eric, "You are absolutely correct, sir."     

Musk is possibly the richest man in the world, and he's distinguished himself for getting behind Tesla, which has subsequently produced some of the most innovative cars in the United States; he made Tesla the first successful American automaker to challenge the Big Three since the heyday of American Motors.  His SpaceX company has pushed space exploration even farther into the heavens.  But thanks to Musk's descent into the hell of anti-Semitism, none of that matters anymore.  He's endorsed the ridiculous "Jewish replacement theory" and encouraged more bigotry and hatred against the Jewish people at a time when American Jews are being held directly and unfairly responsible for the atrocities being committed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza. 

(Full disclosure: While I do not condone the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and support Israel's right to exist, I support calls for a cease-fire.  And I must reiterate that I also support the Free Palestine movement, because, as an American of Irish origin and as a Roman Catholic, I believe that I and my people should support Palestinian statehood because of Ulster.  Ask someone other than an Irishman what the Occupied Territories are, and that person will say "The West Bank, Gaza and the Golan Heights."  Ask an Irishman what the Occupied Territories are, and that person will say, "Counties Antrim, Down, Armagh, Derry, Tyrone and Fermanagh.")

Now Musk's tolerance for neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic propaganda has gone so far beyond the pale that the progressive media-watchdog group Media Matters has taken a more probing look at the issue, analyzing the content on on X and coming to some damning conclusions.  Musk has responded by suing Media Matters in federal court in Texas, where his company is based, for what he calls gross distortions of the content on his social media platform and for suggesting that such content is "what typical X users experience on the platform," which it increasingly is.  As if to pile on, unconvicted criminal Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced an investigation of Media Matters, calling it a "radical left-wing organization" that "would like nothing more than to limit freedom by reducing participation in the public square."

If Musk gets his way and allows more hate speech on his platform at the expense of speech he personally doesn't like, that could have that very effect.

But Musk has to do deal with something else - advertisers fleeing X in droves to get as far from his platform's anti-Semitic tropes as possible.

I'm so glad I'm not on the platform formerly known as Twitter anymore.  I'd like to thank Tia Mitchell of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and all of the other X users for driving me off the platform after I publicly told Mitchell that she looked better without cornrowed hair.

Though, as her appearance on MSNBC yesterday afternoon indicates, she realized that I was right and changed her look when she decided that I was doing her a favor.

You're welcome, Tia. 😛

X Marks the Spot

It is now officially over.  I am no longer connected to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. 

I deactivated my account on "X" in early September after being harassed for committing the unspeakable crime of criticizing a black woman's cornrowed hair, but it accidentally got reactivated briefly in mid-September when my mother signed into it thinking it was her account - after logging into my settings on our desktop thinking she was logging into her settings.  Once I deactivated it a second time, I waited patiently for every tweet I ever posted, every reply I ever tweeted to someone, and every nasty tweet I got in reply to the tweet that ended my time on the platform to be completely annihilated from the ether.  Now I'm totally free.

I just saw a PBS documentary on X owner Elon Musk, who renamed Twitter after X because it's his "favorite letter"  (does he think Silicon Valley is on Sesame Street?).  The documentary noted that, once Musk let all forms of speech to proliferate on X as part of his plan to allow anyone to say anything (so long as it doesn't affect him or his bottom line), racist and sexist tweets shot up dramatically.  I continued to use the platform to post links to this blog and also to write or reply to tweets and occasionally post pictures, thinking that my posts other than my blog links were too innocuous for anyone to bother with or care about and had nothing to so with racism and sexism.

How ironic, therefore, that it was my own idea of what constituted a racially or genderly appropriate tweet that ended up getting me into trouble.  Though I was never banned for telling a black woman that she looked better without cornrows, the relentless abuse and scorn I got as a result was enough to make me defect from X with my tail between my legs. 

Twitter Quitter (Or, Xed Out)

Add a social media platform to one of the many things I've quit.  I've quit a lot of things, but never a social media platform.

When Twitter became X under Elon Musk's ownership, I shrugged it off.  I mostly used it to publish links to my blog anyway.  The operative word is "mostly"; once in while, I would make a comment on someone else's account.  If anyone, including the account owner, dislikes my comment and told me so, I'd either apologize and/or explain what I meant or let it run down my back.

But last week, I made a critical but innocuous comment to someone regarding a selfie this person had posted.   What was the comment?  I'd, umm, rather not say.  If I repeated it here, I might cause trouble for myself.  Which is exactly what I did on Twitter/X where I made the comment originally; responses to what I said ranged from angry to furious to catastrophically nasty.  I blocked some the accounts the incoming flak was coming from, but the person I made the original comment to was particularly angered by what I'd said and responded only to make an example of my apparent thoughtlessness despite usually ignoring such foolishness.  I apologized to this person and explained there was no malicious intent and decided to wait until I got a reply acknowledging and/or accepting my apology.  Then I would leave Twitter.  Instead, I got more angry comments from others.  I decided then not to wait for any acknowledgement of my apology, and I left Twitter immediately.

I joined Mastodon, a social media platform similar to Twitter but with far more safeguards against the sort of behavior seen on Twitter, as a substitute in order to keep promoting my blog, but I'm likely to use it less often because I'm continuing to hold back from blogging too often. (That includes my beautiful-women picture blog, which I post links to only on Facebook, because it seems less and less important to me as time passes.)  I'm moving away from most social media, because it's not only too tiring, it's, as Twitter proves nowadays, too dangerous.  At least Facebook allows me to connect with friends. 

When I had two blogs I promoted on Twitter, I wanted attention in the worst way.  And that's exactly what I got on Twitter last week.  And Elon Musk thinks it's a good thing when someone gets liberally and repeatedly excoriated for an inadvertently inappropriate comment about a selfie?  I'll pass, thanks.

X?

"X?"  Why X?  Why would Elon Musk rename and rebrand Twitter "X" to the detriment and derision of just about everyone?

Apparently, Musk had wanted to create an all-encompassing service that would go beyond public messaging and outreach long before he even bought Twitter and, with typical Musk bravado, decided to make Twitter over into just that sort of online application.  It is to become an "everything app," including a one-stop shop for financial services. 

Musk said that the original name and the now-retired blue bird logo were appropriate for Twitter when a tweet only allowed 140 characters, "like birds tweeting," he said. But now, Musk's chosen new chief executive officer for the platform formally known as Twitter, Linda Yaccarino, has declared that X is "the future state of unlimited interactivity - centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking - creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities."

In other words, Musk has freed Twitter from its limitations and its speech restrictions and therefore, it should no longer be called Twitter, and we should respect that.  And he's called it X because, having freed Twitter from its cage, he's decided that Twitter was . . . its slave name.

Earth to Musk: Go back to making electric cars.