Fandango’s Provocative Question #189
How do I feel about Elon Musk and Twitter? Well, my connection to Twitter is tenuous and my connection to Facebook is non-existent. I don’t use Tumbler or Snapchat. If there are other outlets, I don’t use them. Why not? When Facebook first showed up, I used it a bit. But it wasn’t long before it got really ugly.
I gave up. I tried to close my account but somehow it keeps coming back up. Apparently they will reopen it if anyone clicks on it, never mind what I want. I would think my explicit instructions to close it would be enough to close the account. But hey, I never use it. If anyone is trying to find me on Facebook, you won’t find me.
So, now, the “biggish” question:
Whether or not you have a Twitter account, how do you feel about Musk’s takeover of Twitter and the changes he’s made so far. Do you care one way or the other? If you currently are on Twitter, do you plan to continue actively using it?
The only thing for which I use Twitter is to publicize my blog. If I can’t use it, I’ll be fine anyway.
How do I feel about Elon Musk? I think he’s a rich jerk whose takeover of Twitter is unfortunate. Musk has no idea how to run a communications outlet. He just dumped $44 billion into the purchase, so clearly he thinks he knows what he is doing. I don’t think he has any idea what he’s doing and will have to start hiring people to make Twitter function. Quite possibly he’ll have to rehire the same people he fired. It’s hard to find qualified people.
Moreover, with the lack of that red wave that was supposed to swamp us in this election, he’s going to have a hard time using Trump as his ticket to success. I think that Trump’s “agenda” — if you could call it an agenda — has gone into a slump. I am not sure if it has crashed and burned (yet), but none of Trump’s official candidates took the big prizes.
I think America — right, left and middle — are weary of of an endless failure of our government to govern. Ultimately, stopping the government from functioning isn’t going work. People want whoever is in power to FIX THINGS and they are expecting to see progress. If they don’t see it, in a couple of years, the will be a serious blue wave. Everyone wants to see inflation brought under control. They don’t want to see us going politically backward. They want to see our “leaders” actually leading, not squabbling like bad-tempered two-year-olds in a sandbox.
We need to grow as humans and as a nation. If we don’t grow, we will unquestionably shrink. Change is inevitable. If we refuse to move forward, we will move backward until we disappear as a force in what remains of our world.
Our ability to affect change will shrink. There is no such thing as “standing still.” Not for people, nations, politics, and certainly not for this planet. We fix it and survive or we don’t and not only do we fail as a nation, but as a species.
I hope that there are some sane pols on both sides and maybe a few in the middle who recognize there is no going back. Moreover, no one wants to go backward. If nothing else comes out of this election, I think it showed that most Americans are unhappy with retrograde Supreme Court decisions, especially Roe Vs. Wade.
Red, blue, and purple — no one likes it. Bad enough we have an ineffective government. We don’t need to invite them into our doctor’s office too.
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Categories: #FPQ, #Photography, Anecdote, Election, Government, Media, Provocative Questions, social media, Voting
SERENDIPITY: SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Everything from SERENDIPITY goes to my Twitter feed. Sometimes I post something else, but not too often. It works well for some articles. The key, I think, is followers who retweet and hashtag followers. That is hard to predict. If hate speech returns, I may have to leave it.
The previous management was good about taking haters off the platform, including the orange guy. GMM TV had to request haters be taken down as some of the stars of their LGBT programs were the subject of hate speech. One of the stars of Bad Buddy was being threatened for accepting the part. The big question is “Will Twitter continue to delete that sort of thing?” We are skeptical since they fired most of their content monitors. Algorithms are not going to find all the haters and purveyors of misinformation.
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As I said, I seriously doubt Musk has the slightest idea of how to run a communication/social media platform. He fired all the people who knew what they are doing which was an exceptionally dumb move, so I’m not optimistic. One way of the other, he’s going to have to rehire either the same people he canned or their doppelgangers because that kind of experience isn’t easy to find. Until such time as he make a total mess of it, we’ll continue to use it and hope for the best. When – if – it gets ugly, we’ll have to rethink it.
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I have a twitter account but don’t tweet. The world got ugly very fast. I’m making an effort to be kind to strangers, and remember the Golden Rule. I’ve even stopped screaming at my laptop. . . just saying, Claudia
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Claudia, I don’t use TWITTER either except to seek larger audiences for some of Marilyn’s blogs and a couple of mine. I know there’s a whole Twitter universe but I’m not a resident.
I used to log onto Facebook daily for long periods of reading posts and, often, posting some of my stuff. No longer. I think I’ve reached the saturation point on both things. Now, I check maybe once or twice a week for brief periods. It’s the same old, same old. BORING!
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Screaming at your laptop, that’s funny, So now we are assigning sentients to our machines and devices. Get a grip my friend, as soon you will realize that your laptop doesn’t really care, and in reality is incapable of knowing you are Yelling at it.., it IS, by the way, an IT.
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I am not sure about that. I think mine is listening. It has ears, you know. Sensitive ears.
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Trying to be kind is admirable.
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You have said so well all that I feel about Elon Musk, Twitter ,politicians and governments.
Although I live in a very different kind of place, the attitudes of government and politicians are the same.
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Well, if nothing else, our election proved what I already thought: that more people than just me and my friends are sick and tired of this ugliness and even more tired of dysfunctional governments that promise the world and deliver nothing. I keep hoping that they’ll get the idea, but I’m not overly optimistic about it. It took years for our world to plunge downhill to this chasm and it will take a few more to even begin to re-emerge from the pits.
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Don’t use it, never want to use it. I only maintain a Facebook account because old friends have shown up from time to time, and I have no other way to contact them. FB is way too invasive, so I don’t ever post anything on it.
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Bro, you’ve said it all.
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I don’t do Twitter either.
And like you I have a FB site for the same reason. (Are you my long lost brother?)
I went onto FB the other day and discovered my site had been invaded by tons of mindless crap that I have affinity with – so I trashed it all. It does require occasional maintenance. I use a snow shovel.
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I had a brother once and he turned out to be a “dud” so I’ve been looking for a replacement ever since. Maybe you are my brother?
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