Ever since the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, I’ve gotten more and more sucked back in to Twitter. I still don’t post there, but I have an account and some old “lists” of political and legal pundit types. The excitement was real, and I wanted to know What Happened Next, As Soon As It Happened!

But I’m back on the wagon again, now. There are many specific things to criticize Twitter for, but what I really can’t stand anymore is the hyper-cynical tone that’s basically the baseline for the entire platform (at least from my view, from within my bubble, etc.).

This tweet, retweeted by someone on my list, perfectly sums it up, for me:
Screen Shot 2022 09 09 at 9 20 11 AM" title="Screen Shot 2022-09-09 at 9.20.11 AM.png" border="0" width="277" height="173" style="float:right;" alt="Screenshot of a tweet, reading: 'The Queen's death could create one of the worst weeks ever on here. British people debasing themselves, 600-tweet colonialism threads, men in hats on horses on TV. A grief bomb followed by a magnitude 8 takequake resulting in an outbreak of mass amateur historianism. Be careful.'
One the one hand, that’s probably a pretty accurate description of some of the reaction to Queen Elizabeth’s death on Twitter. Yet this take warning about takes, this amateur analysis warning about amateurs, this cynicism warning about cynics is dripping with the world-weary disgust one must evidently armor oneself with just to participate “on here”.

Maybe it’s a knowing, winking, meta “joke”, at least for some of the ~48,000 people who retweeted, quoted, or “liked” it. It just made me feel gross. On the bright side, though, it snapped me out of my hypnosis.