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As a longtime resident of Book World, I just saw Twitter making public the literary careerism, nepotism, capitalism, raging jealousy, and corruption that had always remained far more private.

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Nov 18, 2022Liked by Freddie deBoer

You blasted off with a gazillion followers though. I have to build my substack incrementally. I know I have a good product based on high conversation and low churn rates, but with the exception of the occasional viral post at most I get one to two paid subs per post. They almost always come from Twitter. I don't even bother posting on FB anymore because I get no engagement. I don't think the end of Twitter would be the end of writing. Probably it'll improve people's writing not to doom scroll and bicker all day. And hopefully people can work together for a better way to promote their work.

But I wouldn't dismiss people's concern as just wanting to be part of online "media in group."

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You're right, but I kind of want Twitter to go away for all the reasons you said. It's a place where extremely haughty people can sneer and be mean to others in the name of "social justice" and get away with it.

And the idea that the platform is a "voice for the marginalized people" is utterly laughable. This tweet right here, as well as the one it quotes, pretty much gives the game away that the real point of Twitter is to be a bully. It's to battle for power in elite discourse. https://mobile.twitter.com/byjoelanderson/status/1591118750517850114

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This is generating a lot of thoughts. I'm seeing so many writers I follow on Twitter talking about how it "built their career," got them book deals, got them in rooms with editors/agents, etc. etc., and I'm just so curious how, in reality, that happens. I don't know what I'm talking about, but I suspect that the people who had this experience also have spent a metric shit-ton of time on Twitter for the past 12 years or whatever. It seems like unless you're willing to be there tweeting 60+ times a day, it's not going to reward you with career opportunities *or* connections to other people/some kind of online community. Maybe I just never hacked how to use it well.

I do think there was a golden time when super heavy Twitter users were able to build a real following/get real opportunities out of it, but I personally am baffled as to how that could have happened (without the luck of a massively viral post) for many writers in the past couple years, since as you said Twitter generates basically no engagement and buries external links. Even for huge publications/writers--they'll have 60K followers and 16 likes on a tweet.

I think the people lamenting the (not yet realized) loss of Twitter are the ones who did manage to tap into that golden time and who for some reason really did "make it" via Twitter, career-wise or building community-wise. I just don't know if they realize how atypical an experience that is. Or maybe my tweets and writing just aren't good. Lol.

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I'm not as confident as you are that Twitter won't die. Currently, it's being run by someone who is flailing about like an idiot.

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One of the weirdest things about Twitter is that there's a subset of every profession that massively relies on it and thinks it's essential, but then most of the profession isn't even on it. I use twitter to follow politics and current events, as well as some writers I like, but don't post and don't follow anyone in my field. In fact, the people in my field who post most on Twitter are the ones I would least like to associate with. And yet it's still deemed vital somehow even though my career is just fine without it...

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"performative enjoyment of other people’s jokes"

i had a friend in HS that was a jock and he invited to me to the jock parties...and they would performatively enjoy each other's jokes. i hated it. i hated those parties. now i realize that that same pattern plays out on twitter communities and that's why it's so toxic. fake

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Shakespeare wouldn't have gotten anywhere without social media buzz.

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Ugh! Why is it that Twitter seems like high school all over again....and again and again...forever?

I hated high school. I was glad when it ended.

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Ironically given Elon Musk's politics and class position, his accidental destruction of Twitter would be the best possible development for the radical left in this country. For years I have been saying that nobody holding a position in DSA should be allowed to tweet, and it looks like I might finally get my wish.

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Ugh, now I am reminded of the band of pathetic losers who whined until you put up an automated twitter feed for your posts. As I've said before, this was like offering a heroin addict just a little bit of that good old black tar, but don't worry, you won't slip back into bad habits...

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FIRST!!!!

i've been blogging for 20 years continuously now. more than 20. unless i die of a heart attack i'm going to be around for another 20.

[sorry about the morbidness, but everyone in my family dies of heart issues, not cancer]

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Obviously Twitter isn't critical to the existence of writing, but I'm pretty convinced that Twitter leads to all kinds of improved matching between readers and writers. FWIW:

1. I heard of you because someone arrogantly dismissed one of your substack posts on Twitter. It seems unlikely I would ever have heard of you otherwise.

2. I subscribed to Taibbi's substack because of his insightful media criticism on Twitter. Previously, I had only known him from his deeply uninsightful views of financial institutions, which were occasionally reported on in financial publications. I'm very skeptical that the content of his that interests me would ever have come to my attention if it only appeared in Rollingstone.

3. In fact, just about every substack I have ever subscribed to, with the exception of Greenwald, was a result, one way or another, of Twitter.

4. Forget driving traffic, Twitter traffic is virtually the only content for all kinds of niche interests that used to be served by trade publications that have since shrivelled.

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I'd put money on Twitter still existing in 5 years, but then again, Livejournal still exists.

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Freddie I have such great affection for your work and it is with that spirit I have to say, I'd be so sad if Twitter went away because I'd miss your periodic butt-hurt posts about not being in the Twitter in-crowd. I found you through those awful/awfully funny Red Scare girls (who came to prominence shitposting so, okay) and have been following your career for a while. I was at dinner with a media honcho the other night who asked the table who we were reading and he offered up "this guy Freddie de Boer, I find his writing really sexy" which was a weird way to say it but I was all "I'm a fan too!) So Freddie, yes of course no writers need Twitter but every time you post about "the media in crowd" I have to laugh because your work is so dynamic and you're well alive as a creative person...and there is no media in-crowd. There is only the work and your momentum and your getting out of your own way, IMHO. (And I get the teensiest feeling that you could win the National Book Award and still you'd have this chip on your shoulder which is something that's a holdover from maybe your before days? I look forward to finding out, upon publication of your next book :) )

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If you saw the same "If I don't need X in order to succeed, nobody else does either!" logic literally anywhere else, you'd fly into a rage. You don't need Twitter today because you already have your foot well in the door re: name recognition, connections and everything else needed to cut through the noise.

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